Analgesia for the pain room
by Arranqueme
Summary: Aizen's training of Orihime is rigorous, to say the least, and he isn't averse to guest trainers either. How much can she-and Ulquiorra-take? Lots of hurt and lemon to come.
1. Chapter 1

And last, to make thy drama all complete,

That love and cruelty may mix and meet,

I, thy remorseful torturer, will take

All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make

In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen,

And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen,

That spot profound whence love and mercy start,

I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart!

_-Charles Baudelaire, "To a Madonna"_

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_Note: I don't use beta readers or show these to anyone before posting. So your reviews are doubly appreciated. Thanks for reading!_

-X-X-X-X-X-X-

The door opened, bright light streaming out from within. "Ah. Thank you, Ulquiorra."

The speaker flicked back a piece of hair and stood smiling benignly at the young woman on the threshold. He gestured at the expansive courtyard visible behind him. "Come in, Orihime. I've been waiting. Please. After you."

Aizen stepped aside and Orihime walked through the held door.

"Ulquiorra, please wait outside." Orihime turned and looked at the slight figure standing in the dim corridor as the door closed between them.

Ulquiorra stood outside, waiting. He heard Aizen-sama's low tones and a few interjections from the woman. Then their voices moved further into the depths of Aizen-sama's palace and he heard nothing. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

The door opened. Orihime emerged, her face red. "Oh! You're still here—after so long."

The watchful green eyes met hers, flicked downwards, registered her disheveled clothing. "My orders were to wait."

Aizen appeared in the doorway behind her, holding a cup of tea. He reached down and stroked Orihime's cheek. Then he lifted her chin, lowered his face to hers, and spoke, almost into her mouth. "Thank you, Orihime. I enjoyed our conversation. And I hope you did too."

Without waiting for a reply, he raised his head again to the slight form in the corridor. "Thank you, Ulquiorra. Please return our guest to her room."

The door closed. "Follow me, woman."

"Yes."

They walked in file without speaking, their footfalls echoing on the stone floors.

Ulquiorra heard from behind him the sound of incompletely suppressed sobs: a kind of shuddering to her breathing, nothing more. They walked on. He listened to her without breaking his stride.

At her door, he stood aside to permit her entry. She walked past him without pausing, her face still red, her eyes wet. She entered without turning, walking directly to stand under her window and stare out at the crescent moon, her fists clenched at her sides.

He waited for a moment for her to turn to him. Then, when she did not, he stepped over the threshold.

"Woman."

She did not turn, but clasped her hands in front of her. "Yes."

"I'll see to it that a bath is prepared. And fresh garments."

"Yes. Th-thank you." Her voice tired, remote.

He turned to leave, and then turned back. "It is an honour."

"Yes." No hesitation, only deep fatigue.

"We are—for Aizen-sama's use."

"Yes."

"I'll leave you then." No answer. He turned and left. The click of the door echoed heavily in the deserted corridor as he swept down the corridor and away from her.

Orihime was still standing in the same position some time later when the door opened again. She turned to see a servant with a full, insect-like mask. The creature hesitated, nodded, and then slipped back out into the corridor only to return pushing a cart made out of some kind of bluish-silver metal. On the upper shelf, bottles of coloured liquids rocked with the cart's motions. On the lower, towels and fresh clothing were stacked neatly. She wondered idly how many sets of identical clothing had been prepared for her use. They fit remarkably well considering she hadn't been measured. She almost laughed at the precision with which the linens were folded and stacked. Here, in this insane place. Everything so orderly.

"Oh—hello." The arrancar glanced up quickly but did not reply, pushing the cart toward Orihime's bathroom. ˆ

"I wonder if you can talk." The masked face implacable, the visitor moved into the bathroom. Orihime heard the sound of running water.

"I guess you must have a name. Or a number? Or something?" She called over the water's gush. No answer. Orihime sighed and resumed her lonely watch at the window. Presently the water stopped. She turned. The arrancar emerged from the bathroom, came toward her, and bowed slightly, then turned and moved toward the door.

"What do they call you?" With a quick backward glance, the servant left the room as silently as it (he? she?) had entered.

"Well, goodbye. See you next time." Orihime sighed again, staring at the closed door.

"It's like I'm in a hospital or something." Her voice echoed off the stone walls. A lonely sound, but still better than nothing. She walked to the door of the bathroom. Warm scented vapour rose through the frigid air. "Or some fancy hotel where they do everything for you."

She whirled and strode quickly to the door through which the servant had left, tried it. Of course.

"Except I can't leave." She turned back to the window. _And anyway, what would I do if I did get out there. _She felt a catch in her chest. _Don't cry. I promised Tatsuki. I will be brave, and come back. _

The thought of Tatsuki made everything here suddenly real. Was this some kind of weird dream? Or—perhaps—was her life in Karakura Town the dream? _Zuangzhi dreamed he was a butterfly… _She remembered swimming after Sora died, heading far out from her friends in her lonely sorrow, deep into the water. As she swam she watched the refracted sunlight on the sand below her. Farther, farther. Eventually she reached a place where the bright sand disappeared, a borderland beyond which the bottom was pure blackness. She hung in the water there, treading, looking down, back and forth from the sandy bottom to the black abyss. She peered into the blackness, trying to see something, anything, pushing her body forward until she was suspended directly over the dark. She couldn't see anything. It was like—a void.

It had called to her then, the nothing. So she looked back to the shore, but the haze on the water made the land twitch and fade_. _She had gazed, then, at the pitch-black drop-off, had wondered whether it was more true than the shifting, glittering shoreline on which her friends played and laughed. That same feeling, then, of unrealness. Of lostness.

She looked over at the bathroom. How long had she been just standing here? Steam billowed from the open door. She touched her cheek, remembering and repeating Aizen's parting words. "And I hope you did too." It had been odd. Now she knew that she hadn't enjoyed it. But at the time, anyone watching would have contradicted that. _But I didn't want it, did I? And I knew it. Even then I knew it. Even while I was doing it, saying it—_Her cheeks began to burn with shame at the remembered encounter. She raised both hands to her face, feeling its hotness.

"OK, I really _do_ need a bath."

"Yes, that's what I said almost an hour ago." The even, familiar voice pulled her back into reality.

She startled, whirled. "Ulquiorra—I didn't hear you come in."

"You were evidently elsewhere." He slipped back out into the hallway and returned leading the servant who'd delivered the bathing necessities. Once inside the door he stood aside to permit the arrancar to pass. Her dedicated attendant pushed another laden cart, this time with tea. And snacks. In spite of herself, Orihime felt her mouth moisten with anticipation, her stomach tighten. As always, food rallied her heart. Even here. How long had it been since she'd eaten? Too long, certainly. Her eyes roamed greedily over the plates on the rolling cart.

"Oh—are those—_mochi_? Mmm." Leaving the cart beside the sofa, the silent arrancar turned and stood silently beside it. Ulquiorra came in, casting himself onto the end of the sofa farthest from the server.

"Oh my God—are they red _bean_ paste? My favourite mochi! And—green tea wafers!" Orihime sat down close to the tea trolley, her mouth now frankly watering. With a remarkably graceful bow, the servant placed a large white napkin in her lap. It—he, she decided—then picked up a thin English-style china cup and poured her a cup of tea from a thin-spouted metal pot. Orihime took the cup gratefully. "Thank you." The arrancar nodded. Fragrant steam rose from the cup. Orihime raised the cup to her face, closed her eyes, felt the steam lick her cheeks, her brows. _Ahhh._ "Mmmmm."

"You may leave now." Ulquiorra waved his hand at the servant, who gave a final bow, turned, and left the room.

"What's his name?" Without taking a plate from the cart, Orihime seized one of the mochi and bit into it, savouring its soft squishiness and admiring its plum-coloured insides. "Mmm. Oh—that's so good."

Ulquiorra watched her closely. "Who? Oh. His name. I don't know. He would have a number. I don't know exactly what it is. Regardless, you may command him."

Orihime spoke through a mouthful of mochi, picking up one of the green tea wafers. "I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't answer. I wasn't sure whether he could talk. But I could tell he could hear." She pushed the wafer into her mouth to join the dwindling mochi. "Yum."

The espada raised an eyebrow as she gulped her tea and hungrily seized another wafer. "He's forbidden to speak to you. If you wish him to speak, you will have to order him to do so."

"What? That's crazy. Why would he be forbidden to speak?" Her words were intelligible, but slightly distorted by her full mouth. A few wafer crumbs fell from her lips, landed on the expansive white shelf of bosom. Ulquiorra resisted the urge to reach out and brush them away. _An impulse born of my loathing of disorder, nothing more. _

The espada sighed, rose, and poured himself a cup of tea. He stood by the cart sipping at it, watching his captive.

Orihime stared up at him, brushing a crumb from her lip. "I didn't know you drank tea!"

"A taste indoctrinated by Aizen-sama. And—as regards your question." He drank delicately. "Order is produced through the knowing of one's place. To speak to one's superiors is to flout that principle."

"That's—insane." Orihime sipped her own tea noisily, savouring its hotness on her lips, still looking at him. She picked up the last mochi, pressed its softness against her mouth, looked at its flattened shape, bit it, regarded its filling. "Crazy."

"Not really. It's a concept not unfamiliar to your human societies. And, as I said, productive of order." Ulquiorra watched Orihime as she absentmindedly pushed her tongue into the centre of the bitten mochi, probing the soft bean paste. "The food is, I take it, to your liking?"

"Mmm… yeah, it's good. I didn't realize I was so hungry until it came. These—" she licked more bean paste out of the mochi—"these are my favourite. The only thing missing is some wasabi!"

"I see." Ulquiorra observed her pink tongue licking the deep-red bean paste out of the squashed little cake. Darting in and out. He placed his cup on the cart and turned.

"Now that your energy is somewhat restored, I'd suggest you bathe and dress. Aizen-sama would like to see you again, shortly, in his apartments. I'll return to collect you in an hour." He walked silently toward the door, hands in his pockets.

Orihime put the licked-out mochi's skin onto the cart, her appetite gone. "An hour? So—soon? Why?"

Ulquiorra stopped, opened the door, and spoke without turning. "One more thing. You are to use—the items. On the cart."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Bathe now. I'll see you in an hour." The door closed behind him.

Orihime went into the steamy bathroom. Back there, in an hour. Surely he couldn't want… already. But then why the cryptic bathing orders? She began to undress. Her clothing puddled on the floor as she studied the cart. _The items on the cart. _The bottles she had seen were of various shapes, their contents multi-coloured. Beside them sat a hairbrush and a box she hadn't seen before now. Nearly naked now, she opened it. Inside were earrings and a necklace of some white metal, worked in strange twists and knots. Her voice echoed off the close hard walls. "Well, _those_ are pretty—but not really my style." Was she expected to wear these to her next interview? Evidently. She sniffed at each bottle, feeling the liquid inside and attempting to ascertain its purpose. Some were oily and seemed like something you'd pour into a bath. But the bath was already drawn and scented. Some smelled soapy. Others were less oily, more like perfumes. One seemed like a pigment—maybe makeup?—but quite liquid. Not one bore any kind of enlightening label or tag.

She put the last one down on the cart, pulled off her panties, and stood regarding herself in the large mirror above the tub. Her face was fine, but the marks on her breasts from earlier were already starting to darken. She parted her legs, lifted one, examined her thigh. There too. She dipped a toe into the water, found it still pleasantly hot, stepped in, and reclined in steamy comfort. _Ahhhh. _Once again her life-will stirred and flowed, and she savoured the feel of the hot water on her stiff body. "Hmmm… which one is soap?" She stood again, stepped out, and selected a likely pink liquid from the trolley. Then, back in the tub, she rubbed her body and hair with the liquid, which produced a scented lather. Rinsing her body, moving her hands over its tenderness, felt comforting, good. She lay back, placing a towel behind her head, and drifted into sleep.

"Woman."

She snapped to attention, sat up. The towel behind her head slipped down into the water. "What—What time is it?"

The familiar voice responded from beyond the open bathroom door. "You are expected in ten minutes. Get out of there and dress."

"OK—yes!" She leaped from the water, seized a towel, and began rubbing her body frantically, watching herself in the mirror. Suddenly Ulquiorra appeared behind her, himself brandishing a towel. She clasped the towels to her front and shrieked.

"Ah—What—are you doing!"

He dropped the hand holding the towel. "Don't be so ridiculous. I am attempting to help you so that we arrive on time, since you have apparently paid no attention to our schedule. To arrive late would be an infraction rendering us both liable to punishment. And justly so."

_Punishment._ "Oh…" She stood looking at him in the mirror, the towels still clutched to her front, her buttocks bare to him, her cheeks burning. "OK. I'll hurry. But please. I'll do it myself."

"As you wish. But hurry. If you aren't dressed in four minutes I'll dress you myself."

"Y—yes!" As he left the room, Orihime hurriedly finished rubbing herself down and pulled her fresh clothing on over her still-damp body, the dry clothes sticking to her and slowing her down. She grabbed one of the bottles, sniffed it, and dabbed some of the oily green liquid in it behind her ears. Then she pulled the brush over her damp hair, put on the jewellery, and went out to meet Ulquiorra. She found him sitting on the sofa beside the tea cart, eyes closed, holding the bridge of his nose between two elegant fingers.

"Do you have a headache?"

"A headache. No." He opened his bright eyes, looked at her, rose and turned. "Let's go."

"Do I look—OK?"

He turned to her again, moved his eyes over her. "Yes. You appear clean. Now follow me, woman."

Orihime thought for a moment of the messy bathroom, the undrained bath, the wreckage of tea. She had been responsible for herself for so long that she felt a pang of guilt at leaving such disorder behind her. Then she remembered her servant—her situation—and laughed at her foolishness.

Ulquiorra spoke again, more insistently. "Come with me now. We don't want to be late."

Orihime's smile disappeared as she followed the espada out the door and toward the chambers of the ruler of Las Noches. _Now, that._


	2. Chapter 2

The door closed behind them and they walked in silence through the now-familiar corridors. Orihime watched the back of Ulquiorra's head, studying the cracked remains of his mask, his black locks. It was easy to look at him like this, without those disorienting eyes locking onto you. _My jailer. _His slightness, his relaxed stride, his calm manner belying his strength and mercilessness. And yet, like her, a pawn in an incomprehensible game. A deadly game, despite its feeling of unrealness. _We're like puppets, and _he_ pulls the strings._

They encountered no one as they walked, and soon arrived at the door to Aizen's apartment. Ulquiorra paused, turned, and looked at Orihime. "We're here. All right?"

Orihime looked at him in puzzlement. She knew, already, that he wasn't given to superfluous speech. "We're here" seemed unnecessary, since she knew this place. And what did he mean by "all right?" What would he do if she said "no"? If she refused to go in?

Of course, he would make her. Yes.

"Yes."

The door opened slowly, held by another servile arrancar, this one more humanoid than Orihime's servant, its face almost devoid of mask remnants. Behind it Aizen appeared. When he saw Orihime, he smiled broadly. "Ahhh, Orihime. So nice to see you. It's good of you to come again so soon. I'm looking forward to talking to you." Another figure stepped into sight. "And you know Gin, of course."

The slender shinigami's smile widened. "Hey, Orihime."

Orihime felt a moment of relief that she wouldn't be left alone with Aizen. _Oh, so it's not…._ But that feeling was quickly overwhelmed by a new understanding, and terror. She looked desperately at Ulquiorra, still standing beside her in the corridor. He looked back at her, his eyes opaque and unreadable. _Of course. He would _still_ make me. Yes. _

"Come in, Orihime. And Ulquiorra, please wait out here." Orihime stepped into the room and the servant closed the door behind her. This time, she didn't look back at the pale figure in the corridor. _My friends, my friends. Live through this._

"So, Orihime. I trust you feel rested and restored after our earlier meeting?" Aizen placed his hand on her shoulder. "And of course you recall Kyoka Suigetsu." He gestured casually with his other hand toward his zanpakuto.

Gin leaned against the wall off to one side of the pair, while the servant waited in a corner. They were standing in a high-ceilinged stone courtyard from which numerous doors departed. In the centre of the little plaza stood a dry stone fountain carved with strange arabesques. At the opposite end of the courtyard, two heavy, massive doors stood open, a vast room visible beyond them.

Aizen reached down and lifted Orihime's chin. His brown eyes found hers, softened. He spoke low and softly. "You look lovely. And I am gratified to see that you put on the jewellery that was left for you. However, you didn't follow my instructions completely, and I find that—disappointing."

Orihime looked from Aizen to Gin in confusion. "I did—use the things on the cart." She felt a chill move over her body.

"Did you? All of them?" The contrast between Aizen's gentle smile and the tone of his voice made Orihime's heart race.

"Well, no… I couldn't figure out what they all were." She looked at Gin again, but his smile remained the same, his eyes mere slits. _What is this. What is happening. _

Aizen released her chin and stepped back. "You couldn't figure it out. Couldn't tell what was makeup, what was perfume meant for some parts of the body, what was scent meant for other parts. That's surprising to me, Orihime. An intelligent girl like you. Such a good little scholar, from what I'm told. I can only assume that you didn't spend much time thinking about it. Would I be right to assume that?"

"Well… yes. I was—tired." Orihime felt her face flush. Gin released his breath in a slow hiss, his eyes on the wall.

A massive blast of reiatsu whacked her in the chest and Orihime dropped to her hands and knees on the floor. _Did he just—hit me? _She could feel it still—not just like a blow, but like something squeezing her chest, pressing her lungs. She knelt, gasping for breath, and felt blood coursing from her nose. She opened her eyes to see it dripping onto the ivory stone floor. The reiatsu-wave eased, and Aizen lifted her to her feet. He motioned to the servant, who rushed forward with a white cloth. The arrancar held the cloth to Orihime's nose with one hand, its other hand behind her head. Orihime panted and gasped, tears starting in her eyes, pain in her knees from the hard stones. She raised her eyes to Aizen, who looked at her with a furrowed brow.

"Oh, Orihime. I'm so sorry. That must have hurt a little. It hurts me too, to see you standing there with tears in your eyes and blood on your face. Why would you want to make me punish you when you know that it pains me to do so?"

_You—. _Tears coursed down Orihime's cheeks as the arrancar stepped away with the bloody cloth in its hand. Once more blood flowed from her nostrils, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, but not before some drops had found her white bodice. The servant moved forward and raised the cloth, but Aizen waved his hand. "No, that's all right. Orihime, please heal yourself so that bleeding stops."

"All—right." Orihime raised her hands to her temples and—her wet eyes flew open in sheer terror and despair as more blood rolled onto her chin. "My hair clips! I—can't… Oh my God—they're in my room! On the cart!"

Aizen's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He snatched the bloody cloth from the servant and tossed it to her. "Here. Staunch the blood with this." Then he smiled, his eyes serene and unreadable once more. "Frankly, Orihime, I'm astonished that you would forget your hair clips. I gave you ample time to rest and tend to your needs. I wonder whether there's some—_distraction_ in your room of which I'm not aware?"

The cloth pressed to her face, Orihime spoke through its folds, her voice mounting as her panic grew. "Please—I need my hair clips. Please, can I go back to the room and get them? I'll come right back here. Please. Please!"

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary." Aizen drawled, ran his fingers through his hair again. "I'm sure they'll be quite all right in your room. Let's leave this mess"—he gestured to the bloody floor, nodding to the servant as he did so—"and move inside. Gin?" Taking Orihime's arm, Aizen led her to the double doors, the cloth still clutched to her face, tears streaming from her eyes. Gin flanked her on the other side. _Sora. My clips. My friends._

They passed through the doorway three abreast and entered a vast salon whose walls, ceiling, and floor were entirely clad in creamy white stone. The room gave onto an equally expansive terrace, dark now, but ghosted by moonlight, its pillars and arches glowing and pale. The salon was sparsely furnished, with oversize sofas like the one in her room, a few low tables, and a huge marble conference table surrounded by white chairs. Aizen steered her over to one of the sofas, seated her there. Gin and Aizen dropped onto one directly opposite her.

"So, Orihime. Please don't cry. Has your nosebleed stopped?" Aizen's smile—gentle, concerned. _Counterfeit._

Orihime swiped at her eyes with one fist, removed the cloth cautiously, dabbed at her nose. "Y—yes. I think it's okay now."

Aizen clapped his hands once, and the arrancar dashed in from the courtyard. "Take this filthy cloth. And bring tea." The servant hastened to Orihime, seized the cloth, and disappeared.

"Orihime, I would like to speak to you, but please forgive me if I wait for tea before I begin.

"You do like tea, don't you, Orihime?"

"Y—yes." Orihime pulled at her fingers, nervously twisting them in the cloth of her skirt. _Why won't he just get to the point. _"My hair clips…."

Aizen waved his hand in the air. "Don't worry about them. And of course you enjoyed tea in your room just before you came. You did enjoy it, didn't you? And—the company?"

"Y—yes." They sat in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the tea. Orihime's tears dried. _Live through this. _

Soon the servant returned pushing a cart, poured them tea, and withdrew to the arched doorway, where it stood awaiting further instruction.

"Orihime." Aizen pushed his fingers through his hair, raised his cup to his lips, and sipped. "How is the tea?"

She tasted it, tasted nothing. "It's—very good. Thank you." Gin was still wearing the same opaque smile.

"We're so delighted to have you here with us, Orihime." Aizen lifted his cup again, drank, and raised his eyes to hers. "To count you as one of us."

"Y—yes." Orihime's cup shook in her hand. She drank again.

"Stand up, Orihime. And put your cup on the table." Aizen gestured to the low table between them.

"Ummmm—all right." Orihime placed her half-empty cup on the table and stood, her legs trembling.

"Take off your clothes."

"W—what?"

"Silly girl. I think you heard me." Aizen pulled back his coat to reveal his zanpakuto's hilt.

"Oh…. No… I can't…" And Orihime felt herself struck once again by a clap of reiatsu, this time accompanied by a dizzy, confused sensation. "Oh… umm…. Yes…" She began to remove her clothing, pulling at her bodice clumsily with dream-thickened fingers. Aizen waved to the servant, who moved forward to Orihime's side and began to undress her.

Gin rose from his place beside Aizen.

"What are you doing, Gin?"

"Ah—I just thought I'd—" Gin's reply was curtailed by a guffaw from Aizen.

"Please. Gin. Surely you haven't been overtaken by such petty and conventional mores. Sit down and enjoy yourself. There's a part for you to play, after all." Gin sat back down as Aizen reclined on the sofa, placing his hands behind his head. The two men watched as Orihime's final garments were removed, the arrancar servant kneeling before her to pull off her white panties. She stood before them, her eyelids heavy and trembling, one hand in front of her breasts, the other covering her belly and groin.

"Orihime." Aizen's voice low and calm.

"Y—yes."

"Why do you appear before me with bruises on your body?"

"I—I… don't… know."

"Why would you imagine that I want to see your body marred in such a manner, Orihime?"

Orihime began to cry, though his words came to her as from far away, and though another voice screamed its outrage from within her head. "I—I… didn't know… I don't—usually heal—myself."

Aizen regarded her, his hands still clasped behind his head. "Were you—perhaps—too _busy_ in your room?"

"No… No." Orihime spoke through sobs. _Live through this. My friends. _

He rose from his seat and walked slowly toward her, carefully lifting her hair back over her shoulders and then moving to stand behind her. She felt the heavy rough fabric of his garments against her body as he came closer, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. His breath in her neck, in her ear.

"Please… Orihime… darling… don't make a mistake like that again." One arm dropped, caressed her breasts, moved to her waist, pulled her into Aizen's body. She looked at Gin, sitting on the sofa in front of her, hands in his lap, his face as still as ice. Aizen pulled Orihime's hands behind her back, pinned them in one powerful fist, and knotted his other hand in Orihime's hair. Then he began to push on her upper torso, bending her, forcing her down until she was kneeling with her face and breasts pressed against the low stone table in front of the sofa, her arms gripped behind her, her tears flowing onto her cheeks, onto the table's top.

"Orihime, do you understand the word _Macht_?" Aizen bent over her, his hand heavy on her neck. He spoke into her ear. "So intoxicating and delicious in the mouth. Like _poder, potentia. _Even _chikaru. _All of them reflect one concept: that power is the ability to _do_ something, to move the universe. And in so doing, to alter the destinies of other beings."

He pressed her face against the table. "What could be more glorious, more worthy of submission."

Orihime's mind was heavy again. Why resist him? Did she even want to? On one hand she knew his touch was repugnant to her; on the other, she felt a foggy complacency and—yes—even a desire for what was to come. _No, I can't. Not with this—bastard. I do not—consent._

"The difference between ordinary beings and extraordinary ones is that they recognize this truth." Aizen now knelt behind her, and again she felt the fabric of his garment as he pressed his body against hers. He released her arms and then arranged them so they lay extended in front of Orihime on the table—_as though I'm reaching toward Gin._

Tugging on her hair, Aizen pulled her head upward towards his, flexing her spine so that her buttocks pushed against him. "And the difference between gods and extraordinary beings comes down to one thing: will."

Now Aizen released her hair and reached forward to pull her wrists together. "You look lovely like this, Orihime. This position highlights the curves of your body quite admirably. And you look submissive. Don't you agree, Gin?"

"Well, yeah. She looks—great." Gin sighed and rose to his feet, towering above Orihime. Aizen also stood. Orihime stayed where she was, pinned to the table like a butterfly, unable to move or even to feel the full mortification of her position. Somehow here, in Aizen's presence, this position felt natural even though her heart screamed its rebellion.

"Orihime, I am sorry to have to teach you painful lessons. But you must learn that you are an instrument of my will. Now—stay as you are, and tell me what your body and spirit are for."

Orihime felt her tears start again, remembering the hurtful training of only hours before. "For—you."

Aizen knelt behind her, pulled her legs apart, and roughly jammed two fingers into her. He laughed. "Oh, Orihime. You _are_ a fast learner. I hadn't expected to find you so wet." She realized that she _was_ lubricated, that her revulsion had somehow been overcome, translated by that feeling of acceptance and complacency that Aizen induced in her. Aizen pushed another finger into her, began to thrust them back and forth. "Now what are you for? Tell me again."

"For—you. To serve—your will." Orihime felt herself soften, widen, even though her vulva was still tender from her earlier, painful encounter with the lord of Hueco Mundo. It was as though there were two Orihimes inside her. One was stupefied, ravished, her senses and intellect dulled by Aizen's power. The other, caged inside, registered all of this, but her shrieks of outrage were deadened as if by layers of glass. _Aizen is winning. He always wins. _She felt her hips push against him, heard him laugh again.

He pulled his fingers out of her and stood up. "Good. Very good, Orihime. To serve my will. Without question. Gin?"

Orihime lifted her head from the table, looked at Gin as he moved to Aizen's side. She looked back over her shoulder at the two shinigami standing behind her, looking down at her exposed body. "No—I…

"Oh, Orihime." Aizen's brow furrowed, his face morose. "Did I just hear you say 'no'? I thought we were doing so well."

Her mind raced. _He always wins. _Aizen pulled her to her feet and pushed her face-down over the arm of the sofa so that her buttocks stood high and exposed above the rest of her body. Her heavy breasts rested against the sofa's arm and spilled onto its seat.

"Now, Orihime. It is my will _at this moment_ that you serve Gin. And that he take pleasure in you." Aizen stepped backward, moved to the opposite sofa, and took up Gin's former seat. He put his hands behind his head, leaned back, and regarded the pair through half-closed eyes.

Orihime closed her eyes, felt Gin's garments brush against her skin. He leaned forward over her, brought his lips to her ear. "All right. I'll try not to hurt ya." Then she heard a rustle of cloth as Gin knelt behind her. He tugged her hips toward his face and pressed his mouth into her cunt. She gasped. _God, no. Not him too. Just—get through this._

But—what a sensation. Never before felt. Gin's tongue began to swipe at her, his hands pulling on her hips. He licked at her like a dog, long sloppy tonguings that commenced at her clit and moved upward, wriggling through her lips, slurping in her opening, and ending with a shocking but tantalizing brush over her ass. Over and over he tongued her, and she felt her hips responding to him, against her will pressing her cunt against him, willing his tongue to delve deep inside her. She could feel herself swelling against his mouth. _God, no. Not this. How can I. I-do not consent. But—oh my God. This feels… Help me. I do not consent._

"Ahhhhhh!" Her moan burst through her gritted teeth and she heard Aizen laugh. "Ohhhhhh…" she moaned, feeling tears start in her eyes. Then Gin's tongue became unbearable, intolerable, necessary, and she jammed her hips against his face, seeking his inexorable swirling licks, and finally coming explosively against him, rubbing her cunt in a circular motion all over his face. As her body shuddered, softened, and then stilled, she heard both shinigami laugh once more.

"That wasn't so bad, eh?" Gin's voice brought her back to herself. "You're a natural, Orihime. Damn." He stood up.

"Well, Gin." Aizen's voice. "Without delay, then."

Gin's garments rustled again, and she felt his hands pulling at her legs, her lips. The thick, smooth head of his cock rubbed against her slippery opening once, twice, and then sank home as he seized her hips and pulled them upward to meet his own. "Aiiiaahhhh!" Orihime yelped in pain. It was too soon, too soon after Aizen's own entry.

"Mmmm-oohhhhh…. It hurts.. . It hurts…" Gin stopped, for a moment, but Aizen spoke quickly in cool, measured tones.

"Orihime, do you not understand… why I want you to have this knowledge? You must know that my will is to be obeyed not only when it brings pleasure, but even in pain, and—yes—in deep sorrow… Gin?"

Gin, obediently, resumed his thrusting, despite Orihime's yelps and whines of pain. _This is… This is… No. I do not—consent. _Tears streamed down her face as Gin banged into her, her breasts swaying and crashing against the arms of the sofa. Gin's thrusting became harder and rougher. She looked over at Aizen to see him still seated with his arms casually crossed behind his head, the same inscrutable smile on his face. _Aizen, you—. _She pulled her arms up to cradle her sore heavy breasts, to protect them from the mad swinging produced by Gin's pumping cock. But Gin's hands released her hips, flicked her hands away, and cupped her breasts, pressing them up and into her chest wall. The pressure on her breasts a relief after the swing and sway produced by his rough thrusts. _But oh—it—hurts. _Tears, tears. She gritted her teeth. _Tatsuki, help me. My friends. Help me._ Finally, Gin released her breasts and seized her hips once more, kicking her legs even farther apart with his own and thrusting impossibly deep into her, then finally collapsing onto her back, spending himself with a final, monosyllabic gasp into her ear…

"Ran—Ran…"

And with one final pump, he was as deep into her as could be imagined… and spent.

Orihime opened her eyes, the sofa cover close against her eyes. Aizen laughed, and clapped his hands. "Lovely. Orihime. You exceed my expectations." He stood, came toward them. Gin rose, gasping, from Orihime's back, straightened his clothes., and withdrew to the sofa. Aizen pulled Orihime to her feet, turned her, pressed her against him, and kissed her cheek gently. Then, holding her shoulders, he pushed her back and regarded her.

"Smile, Orihime. You're so lovely when you smile. Like the sun."

Horribly, like an automaton, through her repulsion, through her despair, Orihime smiled.

"That's lovely. So nice. Now dress, and go rest. Pretty, sweet Orihime." Aizen beckoned to the watchful arrancar servant, who came forward, picked up Orihime's rumpled clothes, and dressed her. Suppressed tears once again streamed from her eyes, soundlessly and hopelessly. Aizen waved to his servant, received a cloth, and dabbed at her eyes.

"Oh, Orihime… Learning is so painful, isn't it? Especially when it's so fast, so urgent. Don't cry, Orihime. Smile."

Aizen steered her out of the salon, through the massive doors, and to the entrance. He opened the door, revealing Ulquiorra , standing against the corridor wall.

"Ahh, Ulquiorra. Thank you so much for waiting. Please—take Orihime to her room. She's very—tired. And please make sure you find her hair clips before you leave her." Aizen-sama beamed at both of them, and closed the door.

Alone in the corridor with her jailer, Orihime broke into ragged sobs, her eyes on the floor.

"Woman." She did not raise her eyes. Ulquiorra raised two pale fingers, touched the browning red spots on her bodice.

"Your—blood."

She raised her eyes, red, swollen, met his clear ones. "Yes…"

His eyes wheeled from hers, sought their path down the corridor. "Follow me."


	3. Chapter 3

She almost pushed past him, crowding him, her recent mortifications forgotten in the face of a more urgent concern. ""Yes… hurry—I forgot my hair clips—and I'm afraid they'll be thrown out!"

"Don't be absurd. They'll be perfectly safe. There's no need to hurry." He walked ahead of her, his pace gait measured as always. "Haste is pointless."

She slowed, reluctantly, to his pace, but her mind raced ahead. When the door to her room opened, she rushed past him to the bathroom. She found there the cart, restocked with fresh clothes and linens and bearing—precisely where she had left them— the precious clips. She began to sob uncontrollably, fingering them, slowly, tenderly placing them in their place at her temples.

Ulquiorra appeared in the doorway. "Why are you wailing? They're not lost."

Her chest heaving. "I—I'm—just so—relieved… Oh, I was—so scared. Sora…"

He felt a surge of irritation—almost, inexplicably, fury. "You have _nothing_ to be so hysterical about." She looked at him, the clips glittering in her russet hair, her mouth open. Then she brushed past him and into her sitting room, flinging herself face-down on the sofa, her body convulsing with sobs. He followed her, stood at some distance, his hands in his pockets, waiting for the eruption to subside. Soon the sobs ceased, but she remained in the same position, prone, splayed on the white expanse of cushion like a cast-off toy.

"Woman." No answer.

"Woman." He went to her side, pulled at her shoulders, turned her until she was half-lying on the sofa, face-up. Her eyes, still red from crying, stared out at him from a face made mask-like by despair. "Woman. Speak." _She doesn't see_. _Then—where is she? _

Suddenly, a new realization: that this creature was not merely an assemblage of the parts he had contemplated, thought he understood. Right now those familiar parts seemed pointless, chaotic, without the animating cohesive force of whatever it was that had gone missing. Still she would not speak. He propped her in a seated position, her limbs as limp and unresisting as if she were freshly dead. Then, at a loss, he sat down beside her, put his hand to his chin, pulled his lower lip.

"Woman, you need to bathe now. And eat." As immobile as a statue, her eyes staring forward, she said nothing. "I'll order food."

"You smell—unpleasant." No response.

He sighed, staring at her impassive face. He got up and went to the door. "I'll leave then," he said, looking back at her. Still she sat as if frozen. He leaned against the closed door, hands in his pockets, willing her to do something. Even to rise from her place, red-faced and histrionic, to accuse him, to hit him with her little fists. He was tempted to shake her, to slap her. How feeble she was, shattered by one day.

But he remembered his duty, the requirement of order. At least she should be clean. Instead of opening the door, leaving, he took his hands out of his pockets and went into the bathroom. He filled the bath, contemplating the mirror, remembering how he'd stood behind her, the view of both sides of her, her tardiness, her rush, her pathetic modesty and shyness. He picked up a bottle from the cart, sniffed it, rejected it. This was repeated several times until he found a suitable scent and added it to the water. Then he shut off the taps and returned to her.

His acute spatial awareness told him she hadn't moved at all. Not one bit. Her body's position remained exactly as it had been when he left her. Her eyes stared blankly ahead. She blinked periodically, reflexively, without consciousness. He went to her, stood above her, touched her face with an exploratory finger. Her cheek felt warm, but slack to the touch. She didn't flinch. It was as though he touched a doll. A warm corpse.

He touched the spots of blood on her bodice, feeling her heart beating underneath them. He unhooked the garment's opening, half-expecting her to flush in idiotic outrage, slap him. But she didn't move. This catatonia unsettled him, much more so than her emotional outbursts. Not one muscle twitched, not one reflex offered even unconscious resistance. Having unhooked her top, he lifted her torso to pull it off her shoulders and arms and away. Her breasts remained bound; after an awkward moment, he unfastened her brassiere and cast it too aside.

Now she was bare to the waist, in his arms. He gazed at her breasts for a moment, noticing how her broad soft nipples stiffened and shrank in response to the cooler ambient air. He looked at her face, stolid, immovable, her vacant eyes, then back at her breasts where the marks of fingers were darkening to violet. _Aizen-sama. His will._

Then he lay her back against the cushions again and untied her skirt, winkling the garment down over her hips. The smell of the shinigami's sex hit his nostrils. He pulled Orihime's legs apart a little, and found the tops of her inner thighs slick with the mingling of copious semen and her own juices. He tightened his lips in disgust.

He pulled off her panties, their gusset spotted with blood and more semen, and tossed them aside irritably. Revolting duty, and not truly his! He should call her servant. Suddenly he was aware of his own clothing, constricting, annoying. He felt himself thickening, felt an angry hunger. _Why not. No different. It wouldn't matter. _But then he thought of her loose marred thighs, her unconscious face.

Wadding her fouled clothing, he tossed it toward the door. Now only the hair clips. He raised his hands to her head, began to remove one. Then he stopped. _No. _He pushed it back into position. He lifted her carefully off the sofa and carried her into the bathroom, her soiled thighs resting on his arms, her head cradled on his chest. Slowly, he lowered her into the tub, propping her head against its back. Her breasts bobbed in the water, swaying gently. Her thighs, her slack legs, rocked with the motion of the little waves her descent had created. Her eyes closed. A relief not to see that empty stare.

Ulquiorra stood and regarded her. He felt his tongue touch his teeth, felt the slow exhalation of his own breath. But once again he was recalled by her face, alien in its stillness. He shucked his coat, hanging it on the door and noting with disapproval that it too had been dirtied. Then he knelt beside the tub. Turning to the cart, he sniffed the bottles again, found soap. On the lower shelf he found some small cloths for washing.

He took one, wetted and soaped it, and then slowly, gingerly, sponged at Orihime's cheeks. He swabbed the area under her nose, removing tiny crusts of dried blood from around her nostrils. Then, on impulse, he leaned forward, licking each nostril with his pointed tongue, taking the tip of her nose into his mouth. Words formed in his consciousness, swimming up from some deep fount of animal knowledge. _Lick her. Wounded. _

He returned to his work, then, rinsing the cloth and cleaning her face until all vestiges of blood and tear were removed. Contemplating his own patience with such tedious tasks. He pushed back her lips and scrubbed at her teeth with the cloth, wondering idly if the shinigami had been there too. _My lord. _

Orihime drifted in twilight, time dilating. In the kitchen, kneeling, face to the wall, the warm puddle spreading around her legs, her tears of shame and terror. So little. Sore. So many hours, face to the wall. The slurred, angry words._ "Bad, dirty girl! I told you!" No—Oka-chan! _Her head, snapping back and forth. Then—Ni-chan_. Ni-chan is bathing me_. His face, close to hers. The cloth on her nose, red with her blood. "Ni-chan."

"_Never again. I won't let them hurt you again. Never. Never." _His hand, the cloth dabbing at her face._ "We're leaving." _

_Ni-chan is washing me. His face, close to mine. Ni-chan. _

As Ulquiorra washed Orihime's jaw, her throat, he saw tears start from under her eyelids. His eyes widened. Though she remained as immobile as before, her eyes gushed, her dark lashes glistening. _Weak creature. But she won't die yet._ _She won't die._

Her arms rose, circled his neck. Her eyes opened, fluttered. "Ni-chan." Then, his eyes close to hers, Ulquiorra saw her thoughts coalesce, realign. Her arms dropped, folded over her breasts. Her eyes flew wide, roved wildly around the room, looked down at her body, at his bare chest, fixed on his face. "Oh—what-"

He sat back on his haunches. "Don't get hysterical again. I'm cleaning you."

"I—" Her hands trembled, flew to her temples, water flicking into his face. "My clips."

"Yes. You found them, and then you lost your senses." He stood, seized a towel, and dried his hands. "I suppose you can clean yourself now that you're more rational."

"I dreamed something—I remembered something—I didn't know." Her tears continued to flow without accompanying sobs, as if welling from a source beyond her own body.

He took his jacket from the door. "Now you're not sounding particularly sensible."

She looked up at him, her eyes streaming. "It's the clips… and you. Washing me."

"I don't know what you're talking about. But given your previous state, it's good that you're talking. Aizen-sama would be displeased—"

She cut him off, squeezing her eyes shut. "Please—don't talk about him."

He turned his head, regarded her coldly. "He is our master."

"Why—do you follow him?"

He snorted. "You might as well ask why the sun rises. It's as inevitable as that. Your emotions are leading you astray. Now clean yourself—and don't speak treason."

"Could you?"

"Could I what?" He began to put his coat on, aware of her eyes on his chest.

"Could you finish? Cleaning me. At least my back. My body is so sore."

"It's beneath me. I can call your servant—now that you're awake." He fastened his jacket.

"I'm afraid of him. Touching me I mean." He stopped, regarded her.

"You're afraid of garbage like that. And you're _not _afraid of me?"

She closed her eyes, leaned back. "It hurt."

He glared at her, tugged at his hair. "I don't want to know. Do you understand?"

She opened her eyes, looked at him. The tears had stopped. "I remembered, just now. My brother took care of me when my parents hurt me. And I remembered how he told me, the last time, 'I won't let them hurt you again'. And you know, he didn't. He kept his word. I forgot that promise until now."

He put his hands in his pockets. "Don't expect—anyone in Las Noches to make such a promise—or keep it."

She moved forward in the water, wrapped her arms around her knees, looked up at him seriously. "I don't. I've been protected and helped enough. And that put other people in danger. I know I need to be strong on my own now."

He leaned against the door jamb, marveling at her. A moment ago broken, now the picture of resolve, despite her weakness. Hoping to be strong on her own, here. He slipped behind her and doffed his jacket again. Then he took a new cloth from the cart, wetted and soaped it, and began to wash her back. She sighed.

"Earlier you were terrified when I tried to help you dress. Now you want me to wash you. As though I'm suited to such servile duties." He soaped her back from top to bottom, assisted by her position, noting new red marks on her hips.

"I know. It's crazy. It's all crazy." She leaned back again, her face below his, her eyes closed. He soaped her shoulders, her chest, ran the cloth gently over her bruised breasts. Her chest moved up and down with her breathing.

"But I _am_ ultimately responsible for your well-being." His fingers, through the cloth, catalogued the varied shapes and textures of her body. He soaped her underarms and lifted each arm to clean it. Then he moved on to her belly, brisk, businesslike, but not rough.

She looked at him, taking in his narrow chest, his hole. "You know, you're a good nurse."

He snorted. "I think I told you not to confuse me with a servant, woman." And yet he had acquiesced, for reasons only dimly apprehended.

"I don't. It's a compliment."

He snorted again. "Stand."

She stood, without protest, and he discerned the weakness of her legs, trembling and sore. Still on his knees, he soaped her from ankle to knee, lifting each leg and holding her steady to wash her feet. Then he moved to her thighs, slipping the cloth between them, careful with the bruises. He pushed the cloth between her legs and into the folds there, swirled it around to her buttocks.

"There. Sit down now." He tossed the cloth into the water and stood. She sat, splashed water over herself to rinse her soapy body. He pulled several towels off the cart. "Now stand. That water's filthy." She stood, teetering slightly. "Here—step out." He extended an arm to her, towels in the other hand, and she stepped out of the tub, falling against his chest as she did so. For a moment they stood like that, her warm wetness suffusing his chest, dampening his hakama. Then he straightened her, wrapped a towel around her body, and led her to her bed.

"All right. Get into bed and rest. I'll see that you get food. And tea." She slipped between the sheets, still towel-wrapped, and then tossed the damp towels out from under the bedclothes.

She smiled up at him. "Thank you."

He went into the bathroom, returned fully dressed. "I'll return in several hours. Rest now."

"Yes." And, lulled by the hot water and overwhelmed by fatigue, she fell asleep even before he left the room, waking only when her servant entered, some hours later, pushing a cart full of tea and food. Sitting on the bed, wrapping the sheets around her for modesty's sake, she ate greedily while her servant cleared the bathroom and drained the tub. Then, when he had departed with the tea cart and dirty linens, she sat naked on her bed and healed her bruises, reluctantly and with difficulty.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to take them away. It was like—a lie. A sham. Afterward, she went to the bathroom and examined herself in the mirror. _It's as though what happened in that room—didn't happen. _She felt her breasts, probing the spots where Aizen's fingers had squeezed her until she cried out. There was not even the tiniest rind of pain there now. Her hips, where Gin's hands had gripped her. The thighs that Aizen had wrenched apart, battered with his hands and hipbones. Her aching vulva and raw insides. Even the back of her throat. Not a mark to be seen, not a hint of tenderness.

She dressed herself carefully and put some of the reddish pigment on her lips and cheeks. Then she made her bed and sat down on her sofa to wait. Maybe the room was finished. Maybe not. She would survive it either way. Maybe it would be Gin, maybe Aizen. Maybe both of them. Maybe it would hurt. Maybe it would give her pleasure, which was worse. Maybe both. It didn't matter, as long as she survived. For the others, if not for herself.

"Woman." As always, his entry surprised her. He walked in, hands in pockets, and stood at a distance from her. "Did you rest? I understand you ate heartily."

"Yes. I'm—fine now."

"I'm glad you're restored. Aizen-sama wants you in his chambers."

"When?"

He leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. "Now."

She rose. "All right."

He looked at her in surprise. Not the slightest protest or hesitation. Not a moment of delay.

"Well. Let's go then."

"Yes."

They walked slowly and silently as usual. When they reached the door, he turned to her as if to speak. She looked at him quizzically.

"What is it?"

The door opened. Aizen stood there, calm and smiling as always. "Ah, Ulquiorra. Thank you for bringing Orihime to us once again. She—_enjoyed_ herself so much last time that I thought I should invite her again. She's truly full of surprises."

Ulquiorra's head turned to Orihime. She looked at the ground, her face burning. Her calmness, her resolution, began to seep away under Aizen's onslaught.

"I'll wait here." He spoke to her, not to Aizen.

"Oh, Ulquiorra, that won't be necessary this time. I'd like you to come _inside. _I feel a bit guilty leaving you standing in the corridor for so long. It seems so—inhospitable."

Ulquiorra looked at Aizen, then at Orihime. This time she raised her eyes, met his. _He always wins_. Together, they entered the courtyard. She looked at the familiar fountain, the now-closed doors to the salon. Aizen's servant stood to one side, beside the ubiquitous tea cart. Ulquiorra looked around the room, hands still in his pockets. Orihime followed his eyes. _Well, at least Gin isn't here. _

"If my presence is not required—"

"Oh, but it _is_, Ulquiorra. But dear, dear—I'm forgetting my manners. We have another guest."

The salon doors swung open, and Orihime saw him, silhouetted against the light streaming from the salon—the impossible height and lankiness, the cruel grinning teeth, the strange dished collar. She felt Ulquiorra's reiatsu spike, heard his intake of breath, imagined his eyes, but dared not look at him.

"Hey, Ulquiorra. And pet-sama. Welcome."


	4. Chapter 4

_**Warning**__: Look, Nnoitora, Ulquiorra, Orihime, Tesla, and Aizen—and an arrancar servant—are all in Aizen's apartment together. You _know_ it's going to be foul and nasty. And that Nnoitora is going to be foul-mouthed. As someone suggested, maybe this should be labeled horror. It is really pretty ugly, uglier even than I intended. You have been warned. And really, if you aren't 18, or 21, or maybe 50, you shouldn't be reading this. Really. Trust me. _

_**Warning for entomologists**__: I've adopted some lepidopteran features for Nnoitora. I know he's not one. Don't worry. _

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X_X-X-X-X-

"Ah. Nnoitora." Aizen opened his arms. "There you are. Please, let's go into the salon and have a cup of tea." Nnoitora stood back, allowing the small party to pass. Aizen led the way, Ulquiorra following. Orihime walked slowly in his wake, feeling his reiatsu flow and ebb as he mastered himself. Aizen's servant pushed the tea cart in after them, its wheels trundling over the uneven stone floor, breaking the awkward silence. Tesla leapt up from one of the sofas as they answered, standing at attention, his eyes on Nnoitora.

"Please, everyone. Sit." Aizen gestured toward the vast sofas. Tesla took his seat again, looking markedly uncomfortable, tugging at one ear. Ulquiorra sat down on the end of the sofa where such a short time ago Gin had bent Orihime to his—or Aizen's—will. She had a sudden fear that Ulquiorra would smell her there, would ascertain that her resistance had been less than complete. Nnoitora flung himself down opposite Ulquiorra, spreading his long arms over the entire sofa back, his weapon propped against one leg. Miserably, Orihime sat down on the only unoccupied couch, to the right of the smaller espada. Aizen joined her there after everyone else was seated.

"Ahh, tea. Please-drink, everyone," said Aizen as the servant deftly passed steaming cups to all of the guests.

Nnoitora looked around the salon. Orihime shuddered, contemplating his folded length, the strange and crude bladed device leaning against him. "Pretty nice in here," he sneered. "Where're Tousen and Gin?"

Aizen raised an eyebrow. "Why would that concern you?" he purred.

"I dunno." Nnoitora sipped his tea. "Just wondering. Is that a fuckin' problem or something?" Orihime flinched at his words, looked at Ulquiorra. But he remained completely impassive, sipping at his tea with apparent nonchalance.

Aizen laughed loudly, throwing his head back. "That's what I love about you, Nnoitora. In the words of a great philosopher, 'I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore'. And you, espada, are a great despiser indeed. Don't you agree, Ulquiorra?"

Ulquiorra raised his head slowly, meeting Aizen's gaze. "Yes. Aizen-sama." Then he bent his head to his teacup again.

"One of the nice things about those filled with hate, as the philosopher said, is that they aren't easily distracted from their objectives." Aizen was looking directly at Ulquiorra, smiling. Ulquiorra remained determinedly fixated on his cup. "What do you think of that, Ulquiorra?"

Ulquiorra paused a moment before answering. Then he spoke without taking his eyes off his cup. "I believe it appropriate to remain focused on one's duty. I doubt that any emotion, even hate, would assist in that."

There was a long and uncomfortable silence, broken only by the sound of tea being sipped. Nnoitora looked from one face to the other. "This is the frickin' weirdest meeting I've ever been to. Does someone want to tell me what we're doing here?"

Aizen raised a hand, closed his eyes. "Patience, Nnoitora. There's no need to hurry our conversation." He opened his eyes and smiled in Orihime's direction. "Don't you agree, Orihime?"

Orihime swallowed, trying to ascertain Aizen's purpose. She nodded, actually in complete agreement with the diabolical shinigami for the first time. She knew what Nnoitora was there for, she thought, though the notion made her insides quiver. But why these preliminaries? And why such a focus on her jailer?

Aizen sipped his tea slowly. "Tea really is one of the finest human inventions. Not, as the legends say, a discovery, because without significant alteration it would scarcely be as wonderful. No, it is an invention, requiring boldness, experimentation, continuing innovation. Probably some pain and sacrifice. One wonders what others thought of the man who first fermented and brewed tea leaves. No doubt they thought him a fool."

There was a pregnant pause. Tesla coughed into his hand. "More tea, Tesla?" Aizen waved a hand to the servant.

"He's had enough," said Nnoitora, shooting a warning glance at his fracción, leaning forward and clasping his Santa Teresa in one thin hand.

Aizen put one hand behind his head and leaned back. "Ahhh," he said, continuing to savour his tea. Orihime felt like shrieking, like crawling behind the sofa. This insane fake civility. She looked from face to face—all different in expression, all completely inhuman in their own ways. Ulquiorra's aspect completely impassive, Nnoitora's characteristically contemptuous, Aizen's warm and friendly. Only Tesla's expression made sense to her; in his face, Orihime thought, she saw her own discomfort, though presumably his part in today's "meeting" would be less painful than hers.

She wanted to leap onto the table, to aim a heel-up kick at Aizen's face, to laugh, to scream, to do something to break the intolerable calm and waiting. She understood that it would be futile; that not one of these men would help her. Not even _he_ would. He had told her as much himself, in her room. She was alone. She breathed slowly, deeply, consciously, calming herself, willing tears away from her eyes.

"Now, as I was saying," Aizen said, rising from his seat and placing his empty cup on the low table in front of him. "Nnoitora. Everyone, please follow me." He turned and led the way to a door Orihime had not passed through on her previous visits. She had only been used in the salon, on the sofa by Gin and, she cringed to remember, on the floor and conference table by Aizen himself. So this would be—new.

The others followed, Orihime and Tesla bringing up the rear.

They entered a corridor with a high coffered ceiling from which several heavy doors opened. Aizen went to one of these, opened the door, and stood aside. "Please, everyone. Enter."

It was a bedroom. Ulquiorra entered first and leaned against the wall, his face utterly inscrutable. Nnoitora strode in and paced the expansive floor, whistling low through his grinning teeth. "This is a nice place, all right."

Orihime followed Tesla into the room, hanging back near the door, Aizen still behind her. "What do you think, Orihime? It's a lovely room, isn't it?"

Orihime swallowed hard and forced herself to examine the room. It was bigger than any bedroom she'd ever seen. It had the same massive arches, stone floor and walls, and high ceiling as the salon of her previous humiliations. It differed, primarily, in that it contained a bed, it too larger than any Orihime had ever encountered. The bed was made of iron, cunningly worked in swirling designs, with four massive posts of black stone. Above it hung a heavy cream tapestry marked with a twisted black device she didn't recognize. Cream-coloured bedding in heavy jacquard covered the bed and its large pillows. "Yes," she murmured, her voice sounding hoarse and small.

"Good design is like tea, in a way. It requires innovation, focus—and, of course, commitment." Orihime's head felt like it would explode. Ulquiorra was still completely immobile, while Nnoitora stalked the room like a great impatient beast. Tesla stood awkwardly in the middle of the room near the bed, his head tracking his master's motions.

"Have a seat on the bed, Orihime," said Aizen, smiling kindly at the trembling girl.

"N-no, that's all right. I can stand."

Aizen laughed. "Oh no! I absolutely insist. We wouldn't want your legs to get tired."

Ulquiorra flung his head backward, regarding the ceiling, his mask audibly scraping against the stone wall. Then he pushed himself off the wall, stepped forward. "My lord…"

Aizen lifted his hand casually, flinging the slender espada back against the stones. Orihime shrieked. Then the shinigami clenched his fist and squeezed, causing Ulquiorra to grab at his chest and cough. Aizen moved toward him quickly, pulled a small pale-green sphere from his pocket, and inserted it into the espada's Hollow hole. Ulquiorra, completely immobilized, was quickly surrounded by an almost invisible glassy-green substance that hung in the air, shimmering.

"What—the fuck?" said Nnoitora. "What the hell—is that?" He stared at the powerful fourth espada, reduced to complete immobility by Aizen's treatment.

"Nothing so different from what you use to punish recalcitrant fracciones—just much more powerful. As befits the status of its target. It would be degrading to use anything less worthy." Aizen said, smoothing his hair and turning back to the others. "Don't worry, Orihime. He can hear us, he can breathe, and he can see. The only senses negatively affected are smell, touch, and taste. So you needn't worry about him. Because you would worry, wouldn't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, Aizen waved his hand impatiently. "Now please: sit down." Orihime sat, reluctantly, on the very edge of the bed.

Nnoitora grew more agitated, pacing the room faster, casting glances at Ulquiorra and at Aizen. "What the fuck _is_ this bullshit? I could be out fighting right now."

Aizen looked up at Nnoitora, scratching his chin. "Please calm down, Nnoitora. Treat this as an important meeting. A command performance, if you will. You're alarming Orihime—and Tesla too." Indeed, Tesla was now cringing against the wall somewhere back near the door, his eyes fixed not on his master but on the unpredictable shinigami overlord.

Aizen walked to the head of the bed and turned back to look at Ulquiorra, whose face remained perfectly still and expressionless. "Yes—he can see everything, which is much to my purpose. Both in terms of his own education and in terms of his recording function. It's quite suitable."

Orihime breathed deeply again, but there was no stemming the tide this time. Her tears broke free, rolled down her cheeks, dropped onto her hands, crossed in her lap. She looked up helplessly at the frozen fourth espada, but it was impossible to tell whether he saw at all. Better that he not see. Better that no one see—let alone record.

"Orihime. Lovely Orihime." Aizen climbed onto the bed, removing his zanpakuto, adjusting the pillows, propping them against the headboard and, finally, leaning back against them, legs crossed, zanpakuto laid across them, his eyes calm and serene.

Orihime raised her head to look at him, glad for the bed's bulk and the distance it kept between them. "You have interesting powers. Remember the philosopher I just mentioned to you? He said something that applies perfectly to you." Orihime looked down at her lap again.

"He said this: 'Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's desire—that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.' My will is strong, Orihime, but it suffers that lonely sorrow. By harnessing you completely, I might well break the last barrier—the membrane between me and eternity." Orihime's tears dropped into her lap, while Nnoitora, finally stationary against the wall, harrumphed in boredom and disapproval.

"Hey, Aizen-sama. Am I here to fuck this bitch? 'Cause otherwise I think I'll just leave. "

Orihime emitted a low sob. Aizen lifted his head and narrowed his eyes in disapproval. He spoke quietly, and surprisingly, without smiling. "I am quite sure that is a command I would never give. So please, Nnoitora, remain quiet and in your place until called for. My admiration for your qualities is not infinite." Nnoitora sighed again and leaned back against the wall, sullen, rubbing the edge of his weapon. Tesla stood as still as a statue, only his twitching eye betraying any lack of composure.

"Now, Orihime." She looked up, and Aizen smiled sweetly in her direction. "Please don't cry. I'm sorry for Nnoitora's lack of social graces. He is rather more—direct than some situations merit. As I was saying before I was interrupted, you have special abilities. "

"Y—yes," she sobbed, wishing fervently that those abilities, so unequal to the task of defending her from this torment, had never existed, then immediately regretting the treacherous thought—because who would have healed her friends? She looked up at Ulquiorra again. His eyes stared forward vacantly, fixed but without apparent focus. If only she could somehow—put up a barrier that he couldn't see through. That might help her make it through.

"You have one ability that conflicts directly with my desire to harness your power. Can you guess what that is?"

What was he talking about? "No—no, I don't know." She tried to calm her ragged breathing, to still her sobs.

"It's an unusual, intangible power. One that might, for example, make an espada dare to consult me today, out of turn, to advise me on your treatment, on the limits of your endurance." He glanced over toward Ulquiorra. "That might make him think he understands more than a shinigami about the human soul—by virtue of what? Having once spent a lot of time eating them, perhaps?"

He laughed uproariously as Orihime flinched visibly, turning his eyes back to her. "Yes, I expect you spend more time discussing _your_ eating habits than his, past or current." Aizen rubbed one finger on the palm of his right hand, looking at it pensively. "But I'm sorry to be indelicate. How rude of me."

"Nnoitora." He looked toward the lanky form improbably propped against the far wall. Orihime followed his gaze. Nnoitora now appeared to be asleep.

"What?" Nnoitora opened his eye but remained in his semi-recumbent position.

"Come here. Leave your weapon. You're needed. There's something Orihime needs to understand." Slowly, insolently, Nnoitora stretched, yawned, and approached the opposite side of the bed, standing there picking at his nails.

Orihime looked wildly around her for some means of escape. Or defence. But she understood, even as she cast her eyes about her, that her action was purely reflexive, that the very notion of either escaping or defending herself against her fate was nothing but wishful thinking.

"Orihime. Undress." Aizen sat against the headboard, relaxed and jovial, regarding her.

Orihime squeezed her eyes shut, steeling herself for what pathetic resistance she could conjure up. However futile it might be, it had a symbolic function: if only to remind her, when the time came that her will was overwhelmed, that she had not rushed to her own slaughter. "N-No. _No_."

Aizen sighed, rolled his eyes, and sat up. "Oh, Orihime."

Nnoitora was more direct. He stepped forward. "Fuck this. Tesla!"

Tesla scurried to the bed and seized Orihime, pulling her arms behind her with one arm and winding the other in her hair. She yelped. Aizen chuckled, placing his hands behind his head and leaning back again. Tesla wrenched the young woman's body so she was no longer facing Ulquiorra. Instead, her torso now twisted toward Aizen, her legs still hanging off the bed, Tesla behind her. Like a great gangly insect, Nnoitora climbed onto the bed, crawling toward Orihime. He reached forward, slowly, deliberately, and with one powerful spidery hand tore Orihime's bodice from top to bottom.

Aizen laughed again. "My, my. So impatient, Nnoitora." Orihime raised her chin and glared at the shinigami through her tears, struggling futilely in Tesla's arms. Aizen's eyes roved over her exposed brassiere, her heaving midriff.

"Do you know what I mean about this problematic power of yours, Orihime? And it's not sex, despite what Nnoitora might be thinking."

She lowered her eyes, trembling and sobbing. Nnoitora was pulling at the rest of her clothing, now, tugging her body here and there, then finally giving up and tearing the remnants from her with main force.

"Orihime. I'm going to tell you. You thought you could gather everyone under your skirts like a little hen, didn't you?"

_No. No. _She sobbed, shaking her head, letting it fall to the side, trying vainly to hide her face in her own shoulder. Her body trembled visibly. She did not dare to look to her left where Ulquiorra stood his involuntary watch.

"You think you can turn everyone into one happy family. A little hen, a little beaming sun. Warming everything up." Aizen was still smiling.

"Let me tell you, Orihime. My sweet. In Las Noches, there are no friendships, no brothers and sisters. There is only—a father." Nnoitora guffawed loudly, now tugging at Orihime's brassiere. His mission accomplished, he seized her arms from Tesla, pushing her onto her hands and knees in front of Aizen.

"Oh, Orihime." She looked up at Aizen's face, startled by his changed tone. No longer musing, mocking, he leaned forward, his lips pursed in apparent disappointment and disapproval. "Why—why is your body so pristine? Do the marks of our earlier pleasure disgust you so much that you had to heal them?"

Her head reeled. "It was—you said I should…" But even as outrage surged within her, she understood his game. She sobbed again.

"Oh, I can't imagine saying that, Orihime. But—no matter. Just be more careful in future." Her nostrils flared in rage, her chest heaving.

"Now." He settled back against the cushions. The interruption over, Nnoitora stationed himself behind Orihime, pushing Tesla off the bed and clubbing him roughly as he did so.

"Fuck off, Tesla. You don't get any." And Nnoitora began to pull at Orihime's sex, roughly stroking her lips, feeling for and pulling her clit until she gasped with pain. "I do this, I do it my way, right, Aizen-sama? 'Cause there's nothing I like better than teaching a bitch a lesson. Though I like 'em with a little more fight than pet-sama here."

Aizen bent forward and, with one finger, raised Orihime's swollen face. She averted her gaze, and he laughed. She gasped again, then again, as Nnoitora ravaged her cunt with his hands, her body shaking, her head jarring, bouncing on Aizen's fingertip. "Only a father, Orihime. There is no 'us' in Hueco Mundo, except the 'us' created by my will. Each espada, each arrancar, even the shinigami, and now a human, are connected through me. It is a web at whose centre only I stand. Only through me. And you must obey my will absolutely, even happily, no matter how repugnant."

Nnoitora, stung, stopped his crude fingerings, looked at Aizen. "What the fuck does _that_ mean?" He frowned.

Aizen laughed. "It means that—she's alone."

"So what's new about that?" grumbled Nnoitora, letting the insult roll over and off him.

Aizen leaned back, dropped Orihime's head, and closed his eyes. "Exactly."

Gasping for breath, her body shrinking from Nnoitora's crude touch, Orihime thrust her hips forward, tried to crawl forward away from the thin cruel fingers. But of course Aizen was there, directly in front of her. She swung her hips, pulling them away from the espada's hands. Then she flinched as one hand struck her, hard, across the buttocks.

"Stop wiggling like a bug, damn it." Nnoitora's voice was different, husky and lower. "Tesla." Tesla swung himself onto the bed again, nearly at Aizen's side. "Hold her." Tesla gripped Orihime's shoulders, bracing them with one of his hips. The cloth of his garments brushed against Orihime's face as she struggled. But now she was immobilized, her shoulders held by Tesla, her hips gripped by the tall espada, only her torso able to writhe uselessly.

She turned her face to Tesla, craned her neck to bite, but Aizen was too swift for her. He reached forward and seized her chin, wagging an admonishing finger. "Oh, Orihime. No, please don't do that." His tone avuncular. She hung her head and let her tears drop to the bed. Now Nnoitora's hands had free rein on her body, and probed her mercilessly, testing her depths, pulling her and stretching her. She sobbed. Her heavy breasts hung down in front of her, banged against her arms, bounced with the motions of Nnoitora's hands and her own struggles. Keenly aware of the frozen eyes not two meters from where she kneeled, she wept in mortification.

"Damn it, this will never work. And why won't you stop your fuckin' crying?" Nnoitora grumbled. "Hey, pet-sama. Watch this." She didn't want to look, but her trepidation made her cast her head back over her shoulder to see Nnoitora open his mouth, dramatically, and unfurl his long tattooed tongue. It was preternaturally long, slender, and abominable. Black.

He grinned, flicking it back and forth. "We'll see if we can make the tears stop." Orihime turned and hung her head again, gasping as Nnoitora effortlessly heaved her hips into the air. His tongue touched her, slithered around her opening, and suddenly lashed at her insides, coiling into her like a snake. The feeling was nauseous, and for a moment she gagged, especially when his teeth closed around her labia. She squeezed her eyes even more tightly together, opening herself to the nausea. Feelings of repulsion were better than despair-inducing resignation. And certainly better than the horror of being forced to take pleasure in her own brutalization.

But nausea was too good to last. Nnoitora's tongue drove into every crevice of her body, exploring every cranny. It swirled around her lips quickly, then maddeningly slowly, then drove stabbingly into her insides until she could feel him tonguing the very roof of her. When he finally licked her abused clit, she realized it was swollen and ready, felt her hips buck against his mouth.

He laughed then, in cruel triumph. And finished her, her head drooping, her chest heaving with sobs, her breasts swinging humiliatingly before Aizen, her face aflame. Her perfidious sex moved against Nnoitora's still-grinning lips even as she remained painfully aware of her silent watcher. She remembered how he had looked at her when Aizen made reference to her enjoying herself. He would, she knew, judge her. At this moment, no doubt, he was assessing her, and, as always, finding her wanting.

Nnoitora stopped. He sat up on his haunches and laughed again, wiping his face with the back of one hand. "Hah. Well, pet-sama. You didn't stop crying, but I think you had a good time. And more importantly, it might actually work now." She heard his clothing rustle as he pulled at his baggy trousers.

Her head snapped backward to look in a motion of pure reflex. She fainted, then, and came back to consciousness still propped, Aizen's laughter echoing in her ears. Aizen reached forward, lifted her chin, and pushed the damp strands of hair from her eyes and cheeks, smoothing them back.

"Do you see what I mean, Orihime? Submission." He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "It takes courage to submit." Her tears had miraculously evaporated, and she felt curiously distant. Even Aizen's Judas kiss stirred no repugnance in her. It was as though she had awakened behind a sheet of watery glass. She craned her head, saw Nnotoira steering himself into her, the alien bilobate head of his cock penetrating her, followed by the wide, slightly flattened, flared, impossibly long shaft. It hadn't occurred to her that arrancars might be different in this way, and she registered it with an intellectual detachment. As if from miles away, she saw the unfurling of two bony appendages at its base. They reached out and gripped her hips, puncturing her skin and pulling her into him.

She turned her head forward again, saw Aizen smiling before her. She felt Tesla's hip pushing at her shoulder, pushing her back into Nnoitora, felt Nnoitora moving in her body. Her face, it seemed, was covered with wax, coated and embalmed. Frozen. The thought reminded her of him, and she looked to her left, staring into his eyes. Before she had wanted him to be blind, not to witness this. Now she felt different. _See me. Please see me. _She locked her eyes on his, but the slitted pupils remained fixed. It was as if she wasn't even there.

When she came to herself again, she was in her room, wrapped in a sheet and propped against the headboard of her bed. A finger was tracing the contours of her cheek, and she flinched from it, imagining the deadly smile, the furrowed brow of artifice. Then she opened her eyes and saw Ulquiorra sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Did you—just touch my face?"

"Yes. I was trying to wake you." He was looking at the wall, not at her.

"How did I get here?" She stretched, feeling the complaint of her muscles.

"I carried you. You didn't seem able to walk."

She blushed in shame. "I—I want to—thank you."

He turned, his eyes moving over her face. Involuntarily, she raised her hands to cover her eyes. "Thank me. For what?"

"For trying—with Aizen." Her voice slightly muffled by her sheltering hands. "I don't want you—to get in trouble over me."

He turned away irritably. "I don't know what you're talking about. Don't speak of it again."

She felt her face with her hands, remembering its waxiness, its deadness of only hours or minutes before.

He turned to her again. "Woman. Let's get you cleaned up."


	5. Chapter 5

"It's all right." Orihime put her hands on the bed and began to push her already stiffening body forward to the opposite side of the bed from where Ulquiorra sat. "I can bathe myself this time." Aside from the burning pain inside her, she could feel something tender in her groin, perhaps something wrenched by Nnoitora's rough manipulations of her hips. As she swung her legs over the edge, a shooting pain rose from her thigh into her groin and she felt the wounds on her hips pull and sear. Instinctively, she flinched, closed her eyes, sucked air sharply.

"You're in pain, woman." She opened his eyes to find him standing in front of her.

"No, it's all right."

"I can smell you—your blood."

Orihime raised her eyes to his. "It's all right."

"Heal yourself."

Yes. She could eliminate this pain in short order. She could make her body untrammeled again, as if this—all of it—had never happened. But the idea stirred the same repugnance she had felt the first time she'd healed herself from Aizen's abuse.

"No. I don't want to."

Ulquiorra frowned at her. "That's ridiculous. Why wouldn't you want to?"

Orihime sighed. "You won't understand." She touched the tender place on her right hip where Nnoitora's gripping parts had perforated her skin. Touching it, somehow, stung her fingertips. "If I heal it, it's like—a lie. It's like it didn't happen."

Ulquiorra sat down on the bed beside her. "That's foolishness. It will still have happened. You can reverse certain events, but precisely _what_ is reversed is always circumscribed."

She turned to him. "Exactly! That's it. So that's the lie—to pretend it didn't happen. See—when I heal someone who's been injured in a fight, who might have died, when I restore them, I guess that's kind of a lie too. I mean—the fight still happened. But it feels like—a white lie."

"A _white_ lie?" He gave her a sidelong glance.

Orihime chuckled, folding her hands in her lap. "Yeah—I guess you don't know that one. A white lie is a lie you tell to spare someone's feelings, or make someone feel better. A healing lie. This—" she gestured to her own body and looked over at him—"this is just a lie lie."

He sighed. "I don't understand. But—as you wish." He rose. "Stand."

"I can stand. It's okay. You can go."

"Stand. Now."

Reluctantly, she rose to her feet, wincing. It hurt to stand. Every injured part complained, and her thighs were weak. She felt something trickling out of her and down her leg.

"Walk."

She tried to walk, but her legs were so shaky that she tottered like an old woman. Ulquiorra swung her into his arms.

"Foolish bravado. You remain too weak to walk—and thus too weak to tend to your own bathing." He placed her back on the bed. "Now remain there, and still, until I come for you."

Orihime sighed and leaned back against the pillows again. The sound of running water came from the bathroom. A soothing sound. She dozed until awakened by his hand on her forehead.

"Woman." He was bare-chested. He lifted her, still wrapped in the sheet, and carried her to the bathroom. Steam rose. Then he propped her on her feet. "Hold on to my shoulders for support." She obeyed, and he carefully unwound the sheet until she stood before him naked. She flushed, felt her exposed nipples contract and stiffen, and moved a hand to cover her breasts, but quickly sagged and had to reach for the support of his shoulder again. She watched his face as his eyes moved over her varied wounds.

He raised his eyes to hers. "Blood is running down your leg."

She shrugged. "It will stop." She could feel something like a cut or scrape inside her—that must be the source of the blood that now trailed down her thighs, mixing with the other smeared mess already there.

"It's absurd for you to refuse to use your powers. Heal yourself." He looked down at the punctures on her hips, then back at her face.

She raised her eyes to his, met his glance resolutely, wishing she could relinquish her hold on his shoulders without falling. "No. This is _my _body. I won't."

He sighed and looked over her shoulder, his eyes suddenly opaque. "Indeed. It is your body. However, I think you have forgotten that it now belongs to—"

"I don't care." She lifted her chin and met his eyes as they returned to her face. "I won't. And you can't make me. Force-feeding me is one thing—forcing me to heal myself will be much more difficult."

His eyes narrowed. "Woman—are you challenging me?"

She looked down. "No. I'm just—telling you."

He sighed, looked away and shrugged. "Suit yourself. It doesn't matter." He swept her into his arms and lifted her into the tub.

Orihime felt the heat reaching into her many sore and tired places. The water lapped at her wounds, turning pink where it touched her, stinging the raw flesh there. She closed her eyes.

The temptation to heal herself rose, now, but was quickly trod underfoot by a kind of stubborn pride. There was so little they _couldn't_ make her do. And she would, she knew, be unable to resist any _other _order to use her healing powers. But she had always had to content herself with staking her flags on the smallest territories. Over her own body she would retain this slight shred of sovereignty.

"Woman." She opened his eyes to his.

"Mmm? Yes?"

"Are you able to wash yourself?"

She pushed herself into a more erect position, still braced against the back of the tub. "Y—yes."

He handed her a washcloth. "Then do so." But instead of leaving the room, he rose and moved to a corner, where he stood, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching her.

She looked up at him—suddenly, absurdly, feeling more naked than she had in his arms. "Aren't you going to—go?"

He regarded her coolly. "No."

"Why not?"

"I—" He paused, picking at a black fingernail. "You might lose consciousness again."

She sighed. Well, let him watch then. Surprisingly, his company was not unwelcome. Her modesty was in tatters anyway, now. She dropped the washcloth into the water and turned her attention to shampooing her hair. It had been recently washed, of course, and it wasn't dirtied as both face and hair had been when Aizen had first used her. But it felt better to clean everything. She removed her hairclips. "Ul—Ulquiorra-san?"

"Hm?"

"Can you take these and put them on the counter? " He raised an eyebrow, but did not refuse. Indeed, he stepped forward and extended a hand, and she placed the clips into his open palm. It was odd to see them sitting there—the repository of her power, in an espada's hand. He turned and deposited them gently on the counter, and stepped back to his position against the wall.

She looked at him for a moment as if considering whether or not to speak. Then she dipped her head back, wetted her hair, and filled her hands with shampoo. It was pleasant to feel her hands' gentle touch replacing the crude handling to which she had been subjected. She closed her eyes, remembering Tesla's hands tangled in her hair, pulling her head. _No. _Slowly, meditatively, she let the sensations of her own touch overwhelm the memory of Tesla's rough one. _Yes. _It was better than using Souten Kishun. It felt—good. Real. Just like Sora's gentle touch on her broken face so long ago.

"You're taking your time." She opened his eyes to see him watching her closely, questioningly.

"Are you in a hurry?" She rebuffed his unspoken query.

He sighed. "No."

She pushed her body down into the water and rinsed her hair, swinging her head back and forth under the water so that her hair swirled above her, touching first one shoulder and then the other, over and over. Another sensation to remember, to substitute. She stilled, held her breath as long as she could, and finally rocketed out of the water with a gasp.

Ulquiorra started. "Are you—ill?"

Orihime laughed. "Ill? No—I'm just—having fun. This is nice."

The espada shook his head and leaned back against the wall.

Orihime smoothed back her hair and began to clean her body, less aware now of the viridian eyes fixed on her. She fumbled in the water for the washcloth, then soaped it. Then, closing her eyes and tilting back her chin, she washed her throat long and luxuriantly, moving down to rub her collarbone, then out over each shoulder, scrubbing each in long circular motions. She could feel the blood springing to her skin, as though she were coming back to life, her body awakening. It was good. She moved down over and under each breast, then over her belly and between her legs.

"I have to move—to get—uh…," she said, hoisting herself into a kneeling position.

"Should I hold you?"

"No, I'm fine." Even in this position, though, she felt strangely dizzy. Because of that, and the inherently embarrassing nature of the task to be done, she worked quickly, cleaning between her legs, her thighs, and her buttocks as efficiently and discreetly as possible. Then she lay back down in the water with a sigh, raising her eyes to his to see his face unchanged, still on her. No. Not unchanged. Oddly, though his face was expressionless, his eyes were glazed, his lips parted, and she could plainly see the tip of his tongue flicking back and forth along his upper teeth as though he were deep in thought.

"What are you doing?"

His eyes widened, focused. "What?" Then he frowned. "What do you think? I'm waiting for you. And it's taking longer than I expected."

"Well, I'm almost done." She lifted each leg and soaped it, hurrying now in consideration of her clearly impatient watcher. Then she stood, tottering again. He came forward with a large towel, wrapping it around her body, and prepared to lift her.

"Wait—a towel for my hair." He obliged her, and she wrapped a towel around her head. Then he hoisted her effortlessly against his chest and carried her to the bed again. He placed her on the bed, prone, then went into the bathroom again, only to return with yet another towel. Without saying a word, he pulled the original towel away from her body, kneeled on the bed beside her, and started drying her thoroughly, starting with her face and moving down to her throat.

"What are you doing?" Orihime gazed into his face. She wasn't alarmed, though. The hot water and the similarity between this and Sora's careful treatment had lulled her into a drowsy, almost trancelike state.

"Drying you. I need to look at your wounds, too." He spent a long time gently swabbing at her throat and shoulders before they were dried to his satisfaction. Then he turned her head both ways as though he was checking for something. Satisfied, he moved on to her breasts. "You really should heal yourself. You're bruising again."

She lifted her head, covering her breasts with an arm. "I already told you. No. I'm sorry."

He snorted. "Fine." She closed her eyes and felt him toweling her belly, fingering the wounds at her hips as he passed, then swiftly pushing the terry cloth between her legs. "Woman." She opened her eyes to see him brandishing the cloth, stained with red. He coughed. "Woman. It's not your—time, is it?"

She shook her head.

"Part your legs so I can look."

Wordlessly, she obeyed him, feeling a flush spread from her neck up her jaw and down over her chest. She watched him as he pushed her legs farther apart and then gently parted the lips of her sex. "I don't see—anything," he murmured. "But I can sense…" Orihime gasped as one slender finger pushed into her, softly probing her tender inner folds. Then he snorted, and she felt his finger concentrating its efforts on one side. He withdrew the digit, smeared with blood, and wiped his hand on the towel. "Hmph. Yes. That filth hurt you inside with his disgusting body."

He shook his head slowly. "You never know what someone will choose to keep from a relatively unevolved state."

"What—what do you mean?"

"It's some kind of acid touch. His reiatsu's still oozing out of the wound, festering. It's revolting." Orihime, her face beet-red, swallowed hard.

Ulquiorra climbed off the bed. "I'll have to consult someone. Maybe one of the females."

Orihime gasped and sat up. "No! Please… no. They already hate me, and—no. I won't let them look at me."

"Well, then, you'd better heal yourself, hadn't you? Just use your powers and get that garbage out of your body." The espada pressed two fingers to his forehead and closed his eyes. "Otherwise… Aizen-sama won't be pleased if he calls for you again." He stalked away and into the bathroom.

"I—all right." She closed her eyes in resignation and pulled the sheet over her. It couldn't be helped. She leaned back against the pillows, tears pooling under her eyelids, damp towels clotting around her body.

"Here."

She opened her eyes to see Ulquiorra standing beside her, fully clothed, his hand extended, her hair clips on his palm. She took them wordlessly and pressed them into her hair. "Thank you." She leaned back again.

"All right then. I'll go."

She closed her eyes. "All right."

"All right." He stood for a moment, watching her, and then quietly left the room.

Once again, as in some infernal rhythm tied to the schedule of her "visits" to Aizen's chambers, she slept, awakening when her servant arrived with tea and sustenance. As always, the foods seemed to be selected to appeal to her tastes. Today even a tube of wasabi. She ate heartily and then, with reluctance, turned to healing herself.

Somehow, though, as hard as she tried, she could not reject the injuries made by Nnoitora's body. Both the puncture wounds on her hips and the slow, seeping injury inside her remained stubbornly resistant to her efforts. It was as though his reiatsu had some kind of adhesive, toxic quality—like the bite of a Komodo dragon, she thought, almost laughing despite the potential seriousness of the situation. Or perhaps she simply lacked the will to keep reversing the irreversible.

She was still bleeding as she dressed, folding a clean washcloth into her panties. There was nothing else to be done, and no way to either predict or prevent Aizen's reaction should he discover her failure to undo the damage his amusements had caused her.

She sat alone for a while, looking out the window, waiting for the inevitable summons. Maybe it wouldn't come? Perhaps the "training" was complete. Or perhaps she would face some new horror: the other Espada, perhaps, or, worst of all, maybe just _that _one. Perhaps Aizen would force the two of them to…

Her thoughts, successfully calmed by bathing and eating, now began to scurry once more in the familiar ruts of anxiety. In fact, perversely, she started to look forward to going to Aizen's room, to the moment when she understood what was going to happen—instead of sitting here, in her room, with her mind rooting in the muck of possibility.

She didn't have to wait that much longer. "I'm coming in," said the familiar voice. She raised her head to look at him. He looked tired, somehow more translucent than usual.

"Let's go," he said. Without looking behind him, he turned and led the way to Aizen's chambers. Orihime mused idly as they walked in silence. How many such trips would it take for her feet to wear a path in the stone floor? She looked at Ulquiorra, walking ahead of her, his pace measured as always. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. They reached the door.

Before it could open, he raised his hand and touched her shoulder. "Woman."

"Yes?"

Silently, he touched his forefinger to her chest. His lips parted slightly, then sealed again. He lowered his hand just as the door opened.

"Ah—Ulquiorra. And Orihime. Wonderful." Aizen smiled. "Come in, Orihime." Ulquiorra stepped forward. "Oh no, you can stay outside, Ulquiorra. I'm sure you had enough of our conversation last time." And the door closed behind them. Ulquiorra leaned against the corridor wall, closing his eyes—then leapt up and began to pace.

Inside, Orihime looked around for the next tormentor. But only Aizen seemed to be present—along with, of course, a servant. The doors to the salon were flung wide, and no sounds came from within. Seeing her searching eyes, Aizen laughed. "This tea party is just for two, Orihime. Just for you and me. Please."

He took her arm and escorted her into the salon, steering her to the heavy marble table, which was already set for tea, the settings placed at either end of the table's vast length. Aizen pulled out a chair and seated her, then took his own place at the table's head. The servant entered with the cart and poured, then served them some sweets. Orihime, having eaten so recently, had no appetite, and Aizen's presence sapped whatever interest in food she might otherwise have had. Aizen watched her as she waved away the desserts.

"Oh, Orihime. Yokan and daifuku. Both with your favourite ingredient. I really must insist that you try some. They're not easy to come by, here. And we don't want you to waste away." The servant again offered the trays, and this time Orihime permitted him to serve her. She then took up her fork, picking at the sweets without tasting them at all. Then she put down her fork and lifted her eyes to the smiling shinigami at the other end of the table. She swallowed and steeled herself. "What am I learning?"

Aizen laughed. "What do you mean?"

She looked at him as severely as she could, but felt a blush creeping up her cheeks. "You keep telling me I have to learn something. So what am I learning this time?"

Aizen put his hand over his eyes, lowered his head, and roared with laughter. He lifted his head and looked at her again, still chortling. "Oh, Orihime. You are amazing. Drink your tea." He sipped his tea noisily, poking at his own serving of yokan. "It's a bit sweet, isn't it?"

Orihime sipped her own tea and sat silently, looking at her plate. Suddenly the legs of Aizen's chair scraped on the stones of the floor, and he was behind her, leaning over her, his arms around her shoulders. She sat bolt-upright, still as a hunted hare.

"There is no lesson today, Orihime. You've learned well. Today only my pleasure." She closed her eyes. "Stand up." Aizen pulled her chair out and she stood, back to him. He stepped between her and the now-vacant chair and turned her body so she faced him. Close behind her, she heard the servant clearing her dishes from the table.

"Orihime." Aizen held her by both shoulders, breathing into her ear. He pushed on her shoulders, forcing her to her knees in front of him. Then he sat on her chair so that she kneeled directly in front of him, her chest at the level of his knees. He leaned forward and unfastened Orihime's bodice, then her brassiere, stripping her to the waist.

"Your breasts are bruised again," he said, fingering them and lifting them in his hands as if to assess their weight. He reached for her chin with a hand and lifted it. "Silly girl," he said tenderly, as though she were responsible for the damage her body had endured.

Then he pulled open his coat, pushed his zanpakuto aside, and untied his hakama. He reached behind Orihime's head, twisted his hand into her hair, and pulled her forward, then seized her breasts in both hands and, pressing them together roughly, pushed his cock between them. Orihime's expression of shock made him laugh. He squeezed her breasts harder, flattening them against himself for greater friction, and pumped against her sternum.

"Many things to learn yet, Orihime." She closed her eyes, her disgust mounting, her bruised breasts aching. It was as though by design. It was, she thought, as though he wanted to push his hardness through her very heart.

A moment later, he had changed focus and was standing, both hands behind Orihime's head as she knelt before him, tears streaming down her face, her head pulling back reflexively from the onslaught, her whole body tense with the instinctive, totalized panic of the one who drowns. She gagged, and he laughed and withdrew, but only for a moment. It was like being forced underwater, allowed to surface only for long enough to catch a breath before being pushed down once more. His hands tangled in her hair, pulled at it.

"Orihime," he murmured. And then it was over. She would have to wash her hair again. She opened her eyes to find him smiling down upon her. "Orihime. You understand, don't you?" He lifted her to her feet and, picking up a napkin from the cleared table, wiped her face and chest. Then he kissed her forehead. The gorge rose in her throat, but she swallowed and said nothing.

"Now—fix your clothes and go back to your room and relax. You can relax there, can't you?"

She nodded, dressing herself with numb fingers.

"I'll be sure that the fourth espada remains available to you. You are, after all, one of us now. I want you to be happy." He smiled and lifted her hair back over her shoulders.

She looked away, trying to keep her face utterly still, and biting her lip with the effort.

Aizen raised an eyebrow and laughed. "Off you go then." He took her arm, steered her out of the salon and through the courtyard, and discharged her at the door with a nod to Ulquiorra.

Orihme stood outside the closed door facing the espada, whose alert eyes moved over her body and face, flicking over her disheveled hair and then off to one side of the corridor. He turned and approached the door, taking a hand out of his pocket.

"U-Ulquiorra-san," Orihime stammered. He turned to her, finger raised.

"Please… let's go."

He cast another look at the closed door, then sighed and replaced his hand in his pocket. "Yes." Orihime sighed in relief, then followed him through the corridor and back to her room.

Once inside the room, Orihime went directly to the bathroom and pulled off her clothes. She opened the faucets, kneeling on the floor and plunging her head under the stream of water. She turned her head and allowed the water to pour into and through her open mouth, then sucked in water, gargled, and spat. She lathered her head and rinsed it, then took a soapy cloth and scrubbed her face and chest until her skin was red. Then she dressed herself in fresh clothing, first scrubbing the soiled cloth and placing a clean one in her panties to receive the continuing flow of blood from Nnoitora's wound. Then she reentered the other room. Ulquiorra was seated on the sofa, perfectly still. He stood as she came in and withdrew a hand from his pocket.

"Did you heal yourself? I still sense that filth."

She looked down, blushing. "I tried, really. But it didn't work."

He sighed. "Get on the bed. Lie down."

She obeyed, not unhappily, given that she was tired and sore from her visit to Aizen. Her throat hurt. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, then opened them as she felt Ulquiorra pulling her skirt up over her hips.

"I have something," he said, his gaze intent and serious. He lifted his hand to reveal a tiny, intricate flask in the unmistakable shape of a woman's torso.

Orihime lifted her head. "What is it?"

"A salve. For those wounds. It will neutralize the acid, since you seem unable or unwilling to reverse the damage." He was uncorking the little bottle. "That degenerate Grantz claimed great efficacy for it. Though of course he's given to hyperbole."

Orihime looked at the espada in wonder. "You did that—you went to see him—you got that—for me?"

He leaned back and frowned in irritation. "For _you_. No. It was my duty." He moved forward again, tipping the bottle onto his palm, then rubbing his fingers in it. Orihime saw an oily greenish substance on his fingertips as he moved them to her hips. "These aren't bad," Ulquiorra said, rubbing his fingers on the punctures there. "Pustulent already, though. One wonders, really, why you were incapable of a minor healing task like this."

Orihime sighed, feeling a strange sensation of warmth spreading from the oiled gashes. Grantz's salve felt incredibly hot, and also produced a strange crawling sensation on her skin. "I don't know… I tried, but I think somehow I lacked-conviction or something."

Ulquiorra looked up at her gravely. "Perhaps. A dangerous tendency, if so. And one you ought to discipline. Spread your legs now." He seized the bottle again and relubricated his fingertips.

Orihime demurred. "Maybe—I could do it?"

Ulquiorra looked at her, rubbing his fingers together. "Your reticence seems ridiculous now, after—everything."

She flushed. He had held his judgment of her back, but now it had arrived. Everything he had seen, recorded in the room, came back to her now.

"I'm sorry," she said, closing her eyes. "I know I—seeing me… "

He furrowed his brow. "Woman. Speak clearly."

Orihime looked up, pulling her skirt down to her knees. "I'm sorry about what happened. With Nnoitora. That you had to see it." She began to cry, covering her eyes with one hand. "And that I—gave in."

There was a silence. Then he sighed, and spoke. "Woman. Your friends. Do you believe they'll come for you?"

Orihime opened her teary eyes, frowning. "What?"

Ulquiorra rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Do you believe that you are somehow blameworthy because that filth managed to pleasure you with his mouth? Against your will?"

Orihime gasped, his frankness unexpected and searing. Then she closed her eyes. "Yes. My will… I should be… stronger."

Ulquiorra walked to the bathroom and came back wiping his oily fingers on a dry washcloth. Then, without saying anything, the espada reached up and extracted his left eye. Orihime gasped again, swallowing hard as she registered the empty socket, then almost yelping as he crushed the orb in his extended hand. He looked at her with his remaining eye. "Watch."

Bright particles filled the air as the eye shattered; then the motes coalesced into ghostly images. She saw herself in the bath, her naked body on the bed. Then she saw corridors, her face, the opening door, the faces of the guests at tea, the vast bedroom. Then, through an emerald fog, she saw the rest. The gaze tracked occasionally over the rest of the players but relentlessly returned to her face, sobbing, enraged, mortified. Her face, that even at the moment of her orgasm revealed her as unwilling. Seeing herself ravished from this perspective, she saw her lack of consent, tangible and undeniable.

She looked at him in wonder, then back to an image of herself in his arms, not unconscious as she had thought, having no memory, but merely insensate. Her eyes looked directly at the invisible viewer, were held. She saw herself placed into the bed, a pale hand rising to her face.

"Well, you've seen it." He waved his hand and dispersed the swirling green dust.

She raised her hand to her face, finding it wet, then lifted her eyes to him. She swallowed. "Thank you. Thank you for showing me."

He frowned. "It's nothing. The eye will be restored shortly. Spread your legs." And he tossed the skirt back up to her waist. She pulled her legs apart, slowly, to permit his fingers entry. He daubed more of Grantz's salve on a finger and, holding her labia apart with his other hand, slipped the finger inside her, his sole eye looking at the ceiling as he sought the remembered wound.

Orihime could hardly sit still. The incredible heat produced by the medicament, coupled with the strange crawling sensations it elicited, inflamed her insides and drew a low involuntary moan from deep in her chest. Ulquiorra looked up in surprise. "What? Does it hurt?"

She coughed. "Um… no… it's just…" Her hips moved against his hand.

He looked at her curiously and withdrew his hand, pouring more of the salve onto it. "Then what's wrong?"

She looked away, trying to quell the insistent, stubborn impulses rising from between her legs. "The pain's gone… and it actually feels… good."

He raised his eyebrows, inserting his slippery finger into her again, tracking and rubbing the injury, oblivious to Orihime's exquisite agony. He frowned. "It's amazing. It's already almost closed. I suppose that fool knows something." He removed his finger for the second time, wiping his hand on the cloth. Then he looked up at Orihime searchingly.

'You didn't pull your skirt down."

"No… I.."

"Shall I then?"

Orihime could hardly speak for the unbearable sensations coursing through her. This unguent might be effective, but it was also diabolical. She could feel herself swelling, her sex throbbing. Her own hands would have flown there were it not for his presence. "I suppose." She swallowed. "It's just—this stuff is so…"

He snorted. "Ah. I see. The medicine's effect. Would you like me to remove it then?"

She groaned. "Oh, this is awful. And it feels-good… especially after… _that."_

She closed her eyes, and suddenly it occurred to her, just as it had when washing her hair. No touch has its potential written in stone. A hand on a face, a tongue in a cunt, meaning wholly determined by context. This felt—good, despite the situation, her mortification, his identity and allegiances. Because of her will.

She realized that she craved touch: one that could reinscribe pleasure on her sullied body, that could bring her back to herself and erase the others. Her memory was too stubborn for her own powers of reversal to bring relief. But there was no way to explain that.

"Do you not fear me, woman?" She opened her eyes to find him looking at her, his eyes narrowed, his lips slightly pulled back from his top teeth.

"I—no." she stammered.

He stood. "What assures you that I won't do as the others did?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think I lack the—instincts of the others?" His voice thickened.

She pulled down her skirt. "It's like you're bound by some—antique code or something. I don't know how to put it. Anyway… with you it would be…" She tossed her head and looked up at him, two bright spots glowing on her cheeks. '

He raised an eyebrow and touched the empty socket where his eye had been. "What?"

She swallowed, closing her eyes. "I know you'll think ill of me. But I'm going to tell you something I was thinking. I was washing my hair, and I remembered how my brother used to wash my hair, and I kind of—wrote that over what happened with my hair in that room." She opened her eyes and looked at him, "Do you understand what I mean?"

He sighed and shook his head. "I haven't a clue."

She nodded and began again, rubbing her thighs together in a futile attempt at relief. "It's like—I don't want to forget. But I never wanted it to be this way. To have it all taken from me. And I thought—to get it back… to override it."

"Woman," he murmured, shaking his head. "Your thoughts are incomprehensible to me."

Orihime nodded sadly. Then she looked at him. "It's probably something that can't be explained. In words."


	6. Chapter 6

"In words?" Ulquiorra frowned severely, his still-empty eye socket darkening further, a look of irritation crossing his face. "You seem determined to speak in riddles. How else would you explain something?"

Orihime averted her face from his gaze. "Well… just… you know. By showing. Doing."

He sat down on the bed and regarded her, raising his eyebrows. "So if I saw you washing your hair, that would show me what you meant with your cryptic comment about 'overriding' experience?"

She sighed. "Not exactly. I was thinking more… " She frowned. "When you're hurt, when you're being hurt, you can numb yourself, you know. Go somewhere else. So you don't feel anything. But it still happened. Happens."

Orihime's eyes moved to her hands, plucking nervously at the bedclothes. "I was thinking… it's better to—write over it." She shook her head in frustration. The same thing, but different." _The wanted touch to wick the others away_.

Orihime was never the most articulate explicator of her own thoughts, of course; and right now she was suffering under another burden. Her hips shifted awkwardly on the bed, the maddening salve still performing its cruel work in and on her sex. Ulquiorra's eyes registered the movement there and rose to her face.

"You're still in discomfort. That concoction should be removed at once if the healing's complete."

She hadn't yet made him understand, and if he touched her there again, she would be all demonstration. She knew it. The girl gave a small moan of protest, flushing crimson. "No…"

Ulquiorra snorted. "Well. I see that you're not averse to Grantz's products after all. Is that what you mean then? Is this the equivalent of washing your hair?"

Orihime blew out her breath in frustration, shaking her head vigorously. "No, no. That's not…" Suddenly she stopped and looked at him. "Yes. It is, actually. When you were doing it—I didn't feel the way I felt with… in the room, there."

She cleared her throat looked down, then tried again. "Do you know… Aizen … he talked to me about—will."

Ulquiorra nodded. "Presumably about obedience to his. You would be well advised to take heed."

She shook her head. "No—not exactly. That was part of it. But it was more than that. I understand something now."

There was a long silence while she contemplated what it was she wanted to say. He waited silently.

"It's all—lost. Everything." Her voice was sad and distant.

He snorted, turning his head to look at the far wall. "Another meaningless statement. And so obvious as to be unnecessary. You're in Hueco Mundo, after all." He brushed his forefinger over his nose. "We're not getting anywhere."

The awkwardness between them was so miserable. _Why am I even bothering? _she thought. But she raised her eyes to his to try. "Okay. But even if that's so… If I _choose_ something—then it's different."

The horned helmet moved from side to side and he spoke, still not looking at her, his voice weary. "Why it should make a difference I don't know. But I understand you now, I think; you seek meaning in exerting your will." There was a long and awkward pause.

"It's foolish. If you're able to move this much"—he held up thumb and forefinger, spaced about an inch apart—"you can convince yourself that you're not a mere instrument of Aizen-sama's volition. And yet you are. " He sighed. "As am I."

There was another long silence while Ulquiorra appeared to stare beyond the white and featureless wall on which he'd fixed his gaze. Finally he spoke again, slowly and almost without inflexion. "So. If you choose, it's different. And what, precisely, do you choose?"

She raised her head and looked at him furtively. "Well… that's what I'm saying. When you touched me..."

He turned his head, his eyebrows high, his eyes fixed on her. She gasped. In the moments he'd spent staring into the distance, the missing eye had reconstituted.

"Ah. Yes." He spoke coolly. "So—you believe that I am at your disposal?"

Orihime shook her head. "No—it didn't come out right."

"I'd say not." His lip curled slightly. "I've already told you, I believe, that you should not confuse me with a servant. And your words are nonsensical. I'm no different from the others who've already had you. If I touch you you're adding to a growing list. Nothing more."

_A growing list. _For a moment she was stung into silence. And rather than arousing his sympathy, her lack of response seemed to goad him further.

"It would be no different with me than with the others. You take me lightly." His finger came to rest on her chest, his eyes narrowed in irritation. "What do you think I eat, woman? Why would you imagine me biddable in this?"

"I—I don't." She looked at the black-tipped digit that still sat lightly on her sternum and swallowed hard. "I'm not trying to command you."

"But it's absurd. _You're_ absurd. Do you consider yourself irresistible?" His eyes raked her body as if assessing her and finding her wanting.

"No," she answered, frowning. "Of course not." And really, how could she? She had Kurosaki-kun's incontrovertible evidence to contend with. She had no exaggerated ideas about her ability to seduce—if that was what she was even doing. _What am I doing? _

Ulquiorra rose from the bed and put his hands in his pockets, walking away several paces before turning to pin her with his eyes again, his nostrils flaring. He had become strangely inflamed by the topic, as though she had insulted him by raising it. "Then perhaps you think I was aroused by the revolting spectacle of your being used by that filth?"

At that second gratuitous dig, the girl's head fell and she gasped. Her heart pounded and her anger flared. She narrowed her eyes and glared up at him. "That's—I don't know how you can even say that. That's awful."

Another lengthy and pregnant silence fell upon them. Orihime dropped her head again. But if she was expecting an apology, she was to be disappointed. Indeed, her outrage had made little impression, though when Orihime looked up through her eyelashes, she could see that the Espada was still watching her intently.

Finally he spoke. His voice was lower now, cooler, but still insistent. "Do you suppose that…" He stepped closer. "That having watched you bathe and touched your body…" There was a long pause. "…I lust for you."

She lifted her head again to meet his eyes. And though she frowned at this continuing and ridiculous inquisition, her chin was high. "I have no idea," she said. "You've been courteous in that department."

That seemed to placate him, because he once more approached the bed to stare down at her. "Yes," he said. "Because those were my orders. And you have evidently mistaken my attention to duty for some kind of special favour." He looked at the wall. "Or some particular interest."

Orihime's eyes had begun to sting. _What am I doing? _Here, so far from home, sentenced to this interminable, no, _permanent_ exile… He _had _been kind, hadn't he? Well, certainly not at the beginning. She bit her lip. No, he hadn't been kind at all. He was nothing like Kurosaki-kun, with his kind little smiles and his protectiveness.

But he had done something else; in the context of their situation, he had treated her with respect. No matter what he said, he might have fulfilled his orders otherwise. Even Aizen had noticed it, hadn't he? And Ulquiorra had tried to intercede for her…

_My friends are gone forever_. She sighed. Perhaps she was, like many a prisoner before her, reaching toward something that in the brighter light of liberty would have repelled her. It didn't matter. What mattered was the reaching. _It means I'm alive_. She pushed herself up to a seated position and looked the Fourth Espada in the eyes. "I don't expect you to understand."

"And yet you expect me to comply!" His voice was uncharacteristically sharp and hot, dropping to a tone that sounded almost petulant. "To follow your whimsical and invisible logic."

The girl sighed heavily. "It's not a question of logic. You know…" She was silent for a moment while Ulquiorra stared at her impatiently. "There's a book… it's about… Well, I'll spare you all the plot stuff. But in it a fox tells a boy that the most important things are invisible to the eyes. That it's only with the heart that you see things as they are."

She closed her eyes. "_'Kokoro de minakucha yoku mienai. Kanjin na koto wa me ni wa mienai._ It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is most essential is invisible to the eye.'" She opened her eyes, frowning. "I think that's how it goes."

Ulquiorra hissed in undisguised irritation. "That's the kind of twaddle I would expect from a human being. Trite and vacuous. And… untrue, as my own eyes demonstrate. What is invisible to them, what you call _most essential,_ does not exist. My eyes see both _koto _and _mono_. Concept and object. No heart can do the same."

And Orihime had to admit that he was right—after all, what he had shown her with his own eye: that had been something essential, hadn't it? To be sure, he'd shown her the scene with its players and movements: But the revealed emphasis, the movements of his eyes, the editing: these had shown her more.

Analysis, perception, and maybe even… the thinnest veneer of feeling. And a thought struck her, too mad to be revealed to him. _Can an eye stand for a heart?_

She sighed again, then laughed. "You know, there's a whole theme park in Hakone devoted to that book. It's one of the most popular books in the world, right? And yet I don't think having millions of people read it has changed anything, so you're probably right about the trite and vacuous part."

Leaning back against the headboard, she pushed her bright hair back over her shoulders. "But you know what? I still think it's true somehow. So I won't be able to explain myself logically. But that doesn't make what I say less true. Because I am. I'm speaking from my heart."

The slender black-tipped finger emerged from a pocket to touch her chest again; the bright eyes followed it, then rose to burn into her darker ones. "The heart. It sees better than my eyes, evidently, even through…. all this… flesh." His finger trailed down over the contour of her breast, quickening her nipple, and rose as swiftly to the divot of her collarbone. "And apparently it talks, too, this heart of yours," he murmured, biting the words off at the end with a bitter snort.

He was still for a moment, as if exhausted by his own sarcasm, and then sighed. "Very well. So your heart evidently counsels you to copulate with me. That doesn't answer the question of what might make me consent to such a preposterous thing"—his lips twisted—"in the absence of my own coronary adviser."

Orihime frowned at him, shifting on the bed and pulling her knees up to her chest. "You're making fun of me. And I don't _know_ why you'd want to. That's—that's your business." His motivations, she knew, could hardly resemble her own, as incompletely as she understood those. _What am I doing? _"I don't know. Perhaps curiosity. Perhaps loneliness? Maybe just—wanting to."

"_Wanting _to?" The Espada snorted again, lifting his finger from the amply endowed chest and replacing it in his pocket. "I ceased to _want _anything long ago. And with the cessation of desire comes freedom from loneliness and all of the other aches that humans and their hearts fall prey to." He sighed and pressed his lips together primly. "There are my orders, and aside from that, only the pathetic instinctual residues of a lower nature subdued by evolution and will."

"Ah." Orihime smiled bitterly, reminded of her conversations, if one could call them that, with the shinigami who ruled Hueco Mundo. Ulquiorra had treated her differently from the others; but his worldview in this moment, was pure Aizen.

Still, the Espada's volubility was intriguing; it seemed directly proportional to his dismissiveness, his incomprehensible irritation at this topic of conversation. And that was odd. If his mind was so made up, why continue to harry her? It was as though he enjoyed argument for its own sake.

He was silent for a moment, watching her, and then spoke more quietly. "Aren't you going to try to convince me of the superiority of the heart's reasoning?"

Orihime cocked her head. "No," she said. "I told you what I think. And I don't get the feeling you'd be easy to convince."

He snorted as if in surprise, one corner of his mouth twinging slightly. Then he stared at her in silence for a moment, his eyes fairly burning into her. "You're a strange human, woman," he said. Then he gazed directly at her hips. "Well. I admit to curiosity. But I won't be your servant."

He leaned forward and gently unwrapped her arms from around her knees, his eyes on her face. She held her breath, watching him closely as he pushed her knees down and apart. Her cheeks flushed, but she permitted it. "You'll be mine," he murmured.

He glanced down at her hips again and flicked his wrist swiftly, sweeping her skirt up to the waist so rapidly that she gasped in surprise, both hands flying to her chest and her thighs attempting to close before his hand thrust them apart again. Then he produced the discarded salve, once more daubing his fingers with it.

Eyes on her face, he sat beside her and, without preliminaries, inserted a cool finger into her wetness to the accompaniment of her sharply indrawn breath. He felt for the wounded area. For a moment her hips pressed back into the bed as if to evade him, but her body remained soft and pliant under his hands. _I choose. _

"It's truly gone," he said. "That in itself is intriguing. It can't have been much if Grantz could mend it. And yet…" His hand paused, his forefinger pressing against the spot inside her. Her thighs parted and trembled against his arm. "You could restore the shinigami in the passage and recuperate an arm long lost, but this trivial wound conquered you. It interests me. You… your powers interest me."

His finger now ceased its exploration of the previously marred area, but it didn't withdraw. Instead, it moved slowly in and out of her, thrusting slowly, joined moments later by another. The crawling sensation was amplified with each finger stroke, as though the friction itself increased the medicine's effect. He slipped the fingers out and began to rub at her vulva, his eyes moving ceaselessly between it and her flushed face. "You are restored."

Of course, precisely the opposite was true. Her chest rose and fell with ragged breaths; her eyelids lowered, and her hips began to move miserably against his hand, once more seeking relief from the salve's wicked effects.

"And this substance brings you pleasure. Understandably: its strange effects even penetrate my hierro." He spoke thoughtfully, almost clinically, but his hand continued its work.

Orihime gave a little moan as the substance inflamed not just her insides but her twitching clit and the pink lips that guarded her entry. Everything seemed to be swelling at once, growing hotter and pulsing in time with the motions of the Espada's demonic hand. He snorted, staring at the spot between her legs where his hand was working, three fingers now pushing into her while his thumb bedeviled her stiff clit. "How hot, here," he said contemplatively; but the corner of his mouth turned up and his nostrils flared.

The girl's head tossed. She was silent, concentrating on the hands, remembering the ones that had tugged at and bullied her in Aizen's chambers, that had spread her crudely for the fucking.

Yet these hands: they caressed her insistently, to be sure, but gently. She let their touch wash over her and replace the others. She looked up to see the Espada watching her with that same look of deep thoughtfulness she'd seen when she bathed: his tongue once against flicked back and forth almost imperceptibly along the edges of his sharp teeth in that strange gesture both delicate and bestial.

As if reading her thoughts he spoke. "You're doing it, aren't you? But no. Woman. I am no different from the others."

"I know," Orihime gasped. "I know." Ulquiorra took his other hand from his pocket and raised it to cup her jaw. He stared intently into her eyes

His hand moved from her jaw down her throat and over her collarbone, finding its way to her chest, where it cupped and hefted one generous cloth-covered breast. She closed her eyes and pressed her head into the pillow, exposing her throat. Then the Espada leaned forward and pressed his lips to her ear. "Nothing. Woman. You must expect nothing. This alters and means… nothing."

And she knew it was true. For a moment she doubted herself; what had she been thinking, believing that she could create something different out of the wreckage of these days? Aizen had taught her clearly and implacably that she would not be able to build a bastion around herself.

Not for her the cry _Only if I want to. _It seemed to her a kind of impossible wistful dream now, to say that her body would be touched only with her consent. And that being out of reach, she had thought: _Wouldn't it be wonderful to do it because I want it. _

Was that then why she had convinced herself she did? And how, after the numbing violence of these days, could she still desire anything but oblivion? These were the thoughts that tormented her as Ulquiorra's hand continued to stroke her, his breath light in her ear and his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and turned them to the side to see his face close to hers, his eyes also closed, his lips parted. "Woman," he breathed.

She looked at him. "Y-yes."

"Your plan. Does it call for a complete repetition?" His nose had moved into her hair and he was sniffing her, his breath soughing softly behind her ear now. He held his face close to her on both inhale and exhale, his nose and lips tracking over her skin as if he were a dog on a trail. The hand left her vulva now, sliding up along her side to grasp her other shoulder so that both were now confined within his grip.

It took her a moment to understand what he was asking. "Oh!" she said, once again flushing. Oh, if Tatsuki could see her now… "I don't know," she murmured.

"Ah." His body relaxed against hers, and he moved his face to her jaw, nuzzling her a little and then swiping the tip of his his tongue across her cheek and up over her nostrils. She quivered. "Unhhh," she breathed. Yes, this was what it felt like; desire, a little hot blue flame burning in her hips and in her head, its heat spreading out from those doubled origins to make her body quicken and tremble. Desire, not submission.

She had imagined moments like this, back in her apartment with her own hands serving her pleasure. But those imaginings had been rose-tinged. Even at their filthiest, when her mouth shaped audible words of the crudest kind, she had imagined not merely sex but love. Love as only a schoolgirl can envision it, uncomplicated, mutual, and saccharine. And this?

Nothing of the sort. And yet she desired. Not the desire of teenaged romance, but something gaunt and hungry, something that wandered forsaken in the desert and sought shelter where it found it.

Something willing to curl against the body of someone _completely incapable of love_—not because it expected anything in return but because it yearned itself. And was desperate.

Something that said, clear-eyed and unspeakably sad, grasping at what looked like life: _Here I am. Show me you. _

Something that looked, and saw. Not a prince, nor a saviour. _Don't expect anyone in Las Noches to make such a promise. _Another creature, unfree, unreachable and yet reached for.

And she reached for him, her arms snaking up and around the helmeted head. One hand buried itself in the shaggy hair, the other rising to grip the solitary horn. He made a sound something like a grunt. She felt the hole in his chest tug at her breasts through the layers of cloth between them; a thick wave of reiatsu washed over her. And then he growled and pulled away from her. Her hands flew off him and into the air, palms toward him placatingly. He rose to consider her, his lips parted, his tongue visible, his pupils wide and heady. "Don't," he said, pinching his nostrils shut as if to seal out the smell of her. His chest rose and fell with his breath.

"What—what did I do?" She lowered her hands, keeping them well away from his body.

He looked at the wall above her head. "For us… " He cleared his throat. "You must remember that you contain a soul. A powerful one. To me you smell…" His voice dropped. "You smell good. Excitement, impulse: they flare. So don't touch me without warning me. Asking me."

She nodded. "I… I didn't understand. Maybe this isn't… Maybe we should…"

But before she could finish, he dropped back down upon her, his lips at her ear. "What I want. Do you understand?"

Once again she nodded her head against him, her eyes on the ceiling. She hadn't been thinking of that, but it struck her now as brutally obvious. It wasn't just the _absence_ of love—it was the presence of something, that residue of which he had spoken. She was his prey, and she was offering herself to him.

She was, of course, protected by Aizen's orders, to which Ulquiorra Cifer was perhaps more dedicated than any of the others. Why should he feel something to which the much less controlled and rational Nnoitra had seemed oblivious? It was a puzzle. She frowned at him. "You won't… hurt me."

He appeared to have regained his composure. "I won't," he said. "It would contravene my orders."

It was an odd response, perhaps, but Orihime laughed. "Yeah," she said. "Wouldn't want that." It was a strange thing; that little flame of desire had guttered a bit with their conversation, but it remained there like a pilot light. If he touched her, she knew, it would leap up and ignite again. _Here I am. Show me you. Enough warm in me for both of us. _She reached up and pulled at the collar of his jacket.

His eyebrows rose. "Leave that on," he said. "The hole." Orihime's eyebrows lowered. "I know," she said. "Take it off." And ignoring his previous caution, she raised her hand and seized the horn again, pulling his face to hers and pressing her mouth against his. His head pulled back.

"Ah," he breathed. "What are you doing… I said"—and the girl's pink lips pushed themselves against his again, her hands rising to tug at his lapels so that the jacket was pulled over his shoulders, imprisoning his arms. He lifted each arm in turn and shook the sleeves off irritably, rearing over her with his slender torso revealed as it had been when he bathed her, the hole hovering now above her plump breasts, the gothic numeral inky against his pale skin.

"Kiss me…" she said, pulling him by the shoulders and onto her. The hole suckled and tickled at her, producing a sensation like a little menthol-impregnated wind. She pushed against it, eliciting a tiny moan from him, followed by that same low growl he'd given before. His eyes were once again wide and dilated as he gazed at her.

Then he pushed her shoulders back against the bed and fell upon her with a vengeance, sucking and licking at the skin of her throat and cheeks, his tongue moving over her face and even into the recesses of her nostrils and eyes. He licked her carelessly, greedily, tenderly like an animal.

"_On…na_," he breathed against her flesh. His hands, similarly tingling, crept over her hard and insistent, moulding her breasts and pulling her nipples taut through the cloth of her uniform, carving their way through her waistline and finding each hip to pull her to him. And she felt him, hard and thick through his hakama, the bulk of his cock nudging against her pelvis and thighs. He pulled back from her, tugging at her bodice impatiently until her breasts were revealed. "Disrobe," he said. "As I've seen you. This time for me."

She didn't say no. With trembling hands she pulled off her bodice, winkling the strange keyhole-shaped peplum up and over her head; then she unbuttoned her skirt and lifted her buttocks to pull it down. But he wouldn't wait. "Move," he hissed, seizing the cloth and jerking it roughly down over her legs and off. Then he sat back and looked at her, creamy, soft, and naked on the bed in front of him, his face utterly impassive but for the slight flare of his nostrils.

Suddenly he flipped her onto her belly, then pulled her hips up into the air until she was folded and kneeling in the messed bedclothes with her face and breasts against the mattress, her belly nearly touching her flexed thighs, everything exposed to his gaze, "Present yourself to me, woman," he said.

"What?" Orihime murmured. How she could be more presented than she was right now she didn't know. Her ass was in the air, the coolness of the room's air plucking at her wetness. Without responding, Ulquiorra pushed her thighs further apart and pulled her labia open with one hand so that her cunt was totally opened for him. Then she felt him slip two fingers inside her. "Tell me then how this is different," he murmured.

She pushed her hips back against him, the heat of the salve quickening again under the friction. "Oh…. Because I… Ahhhh… I want…" _The one who cannot love me. Not a cure, but an anaesthetic. _He thrust his fingers in and out of her, almost as roughly as Aizen had. But it was different, not in form but in substance. She rubbed her face against the bedclothes.

"And this you like," he said, pushing himself back and kneeling between her legs, then lowering his face and pressing it into her sex. He smelled her, slowly and carefully, like an animal, and then slowly licked her from perineum to clit. She whimpered. His breath huffed out on her, cool against her hotter flesh. "Oh," she gasped. "Oh don't stop…"

He chuckled sardonically. "All right," he said. "But my face is tingling." His mouth lowered itself to her again, his nose dipping between the folds of her sex and right into her opening. "Hunh," he grunted. "Your… smell."

And he was right. She liked it. Unambivalently, now, unlike when she had been forced to it. "Ahhh," she said, pushing her cunt back against his face and then stiffening as something strangely long and slender slithered into her. _Of course. He too._ It was his tongue, now extended to its full length. It was so different from a human's, lengthy and somehow sticky.

As Nnoitra's tongue had done , it slapped into every crevice of her, making her hips pump against his face and eliciting a chuckle from him as Ulquiorra seized her thighs and held her still for the tonguing. He sucked her labia into his mouth,, then released her altogether and sniffed at her, long and slow, rubbing his nose through her slit and against her clit. His teeth rubbed against either side of her, imprisoning the entirety of her vulva, which he sucked into his mouth before releasing it to return to slowly tonguing her slit itself.

Her excitement mounted, and her hips began to rotate slowly and needily against him, "No," he said. And he chuckled and pulled back, rising on his knees and pushing her legs farther apart, then thrusting three fingers into her and pumping them in and out. A moment later and the hands and face were both gone.

She heard the rustling of his hakama and looked back over her shoulder at him with a bit of trepidation. "Don't look, human," he said. "No fainting." But she looked. _He too. _She had seen one Arrancar; she knew they must all be like that. And sure enough, it was different. Not human. Outsized, membranous, club-shaped. The organ of a bat, erect and pointed menacingly at her cunt.

She swallowed as he gripped it in a hand, rubbed it against her wet slit. And of course she moaned, pushing herself back against him. "Oho," he chuckled, seizing her by both hips and pulling her onto him with a sigh until the tip of his cock slipped well inside her. "Onna," he said.

For a moment he was still. Then he pushed firmly, hissing a little through his teeth as he watched his length disappearing inside her and felt himself snugly embedded in her body—alive, quivering, warm with pulsing blood and vital fluids, crawling with the residue of the salve that he now felt coating him, making his member twitch and tingle. His eyelids fluttered.

She arched her back. "Ahhh," she gasped. He pulled out slowly, the pale shaft glistening with her wetness. "You… can take it. Strange human." he breathed. And then he pushed into her again, harder this time.

The friction and the fullness reactivated Grantz's ointment fully, and Orihime felt her cunt twitching and swelling around the bestial cock as Ulquiorra leaned forward over her, his hands reaching under her and finding her breasts, gripping them hard and fingering her nipples as he began to pump into her in earnest. He released her for a moment, only to tug her hips up further and closer to him.

With each stroke his cock drove farther into her. How many times was this now, in such a short time? And yet it was different. _Only this. Because I wanted it. _She thrust herself back against him harder. "Oh… oh…" she panted, her head hanging down as her spine flexed to offer him deeper access.

And then he was lifting her by both thighs, parting them further to piston her smoothly over top of him, moving her body almost more than his own. Whether because of the salve or because of her own readiness, there was no pain, only a sensation of complete fullness and a strange delirium that mounted somewhere inside her, though she couldn't tell whether it was in her head or between her legs,

Her cunt, both swollen and sloppy, grabbed gluttonously at the Arrancar's thick member, now smoothly driving into her to the fullest extent possible so that with every stroke she gave a little gasp not of pain but of completion.

Her entrance seemed to clench, while the rest of her opened, a new wave of slickness issuing forth from her as her muscles twitched and rippled around the turgid cock. And then, quite surprisingly, she was coming on him, her vagina contracting rhythmically and her body writhing in his hands, her own hands digging into the bedclothes and an astonishing wetness drooling down over him.

His eyes were fixed on that spot now, the place where his body was driving into hers; and the combination of the feeling and sight of her orgasm pushed him to his own. _My hierro… is overcome, _he thought, a deep coiling sensation wrapping itself around something inside him behind his balls and then lashing forward like a whip, unfurling in a series of pumping drives that shot him into her hard. He convulsed, his breath hissing out as he folded himself over her back and banged her for all he was worth, gasping quietly and finally sinking his teeth into her shoulder as his member jerked and spurted inside her.

For a moment they were both quiet, his body draped over hers, their breathing slowly moderating. Orihime sighed, moistened her lips, and prepared to speak, for she suddenly felt lonely. She had been taken from behind again, and she wished now to see her partner's face. She turned her head to the side, and he rubbed his forehead against her cheek. "Ulquiorra-san," she said, smiling weakly .

Before the Arrancar could respond—if indeed he intended to do so—the sound of two hands clapping rose discordant in the quiet air of Orihime's room. Both heads jerked and looked back at the origin of the sound. It was Aizen Sosuke, and he was standing in the doorway as though he'd just dropped by, his magnificent control of his reiatsu enabling him to bypass even Ulquiorra's highly refined pesquisa. No door could bar him.

"Ah," the Shingami said, smiling. "I'm interrupting. How rude of me."

Ulquiorra hastily tugged the bedclothes up, turning and pulling himself out of the woman's body and placing his own body between her and his lord. "Aizen-sama," he said, his face completely immobile.

Aizen waved his hand. "Yes, Ulquiorra. I'm sorry to have interfered. I'm delighted though. I didn't think you'd permit the lower ranking to access a privilege without enjoying it yourself. That would hardly be proper." He chuckled. "And there's evidently enough to go around, eh Orihime?"

The girl cowered in the bed, trembling, mortified, and bitter. Even in her cell, what she'd tried to make hers would be stripped from her. _You monster. He always wins. _

"Well, I'll be on my way," said the rogue Shinigami, stepping through the door before turning back as if he'd forgotten something. "But I'll look forward to seeing you both in my chambers. Hmm?" And he was gone.


End file.
